Excel and 15+ digit numbers

[danhattan]

Using Excel and Word 2003.

Our Word document populates with data entered into an Excel spreadsheet.
Part of the data includes account numbers, often longer than 15 digits. We're
aware that Excel changes every digit after the 15th to a zero if the cell is
formatted as a number. We can actually live with that for our purposes.

The problem is that the Word document wants to convert these long numbers
into scientific notation so that there's a decimal point after the first
digit and an "E+16" tacked onto the end.

Is there a way to prevent this so that the number displays in Word as it
does in Excel? I tried using the Arabic switch, but it generates an error
saying the number cannot be represented in that format.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Peter Jamieson]

How are your account number cells formattedi n Excel? If it isn't "text", is
there a reason why you cannot format as text?

If it is "text"
a. Is the whole column formatted that way?
b. can you back up your sheet, select the column, then use the Data|Text to
columns option and in step 3, select the "Text" data format, then Finish.
Does that make any difference?

Are you using these account numbers in any way within Word except as a
simple { MERGEFIELD accountno } field?

Peter Jamieson

 

[danhattan]

Just tried that and it worked perfectly. In all the years I've used Excel
I've never had cause to format a cell as text, and not sure I even realized
it was an option. Our people are populating that column by pasting from
another application, and I wanted to avoid requiring them to type an
apostrophe prior to the paste, so this works very well.

Thanks much for all the help you provide. I try to search for previous
similar questions before adding a redundant post and you've been unknowingly
helpful to me many times.

Dan