Help with Formatting Number as Text

[klafert]

I have a spreadsheet that contains the following data:

Date Account ID
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 5280-3-01
5/14/08 1030-0-01
5/14/08 1030-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01
5/14/08 2101-0-01


When I save it as a .csv file it looks like this:

Date Account ID
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 3/1/5280
5/14/2008 1030-0-01
5/14/2008 1030-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01
5/14/2008 2101-0-01


I have formatted it to Text, Number, and General etc. I have Copy the data
into a new spreadsheet, cleared all formatting. Tried this on two different
computers. No matter what it keeps changing the 2nd column to a data format.
Even though it doesn’t do it to the other account ID. I have imported this
stuff before and no problem. I am not importing into Excel.

 

[Sheeloo]

Insert ' before your account ids.

 

[Billy Liddel]

I forgot to mention that the data must be pasted using the Paste Special
method and pasted as text.

This is most important! The data will be formatted if you do not do this.

 

[klafert]

I have done that didn't work. Woks in the .xls file but not the .csv file.

 

[klafert]

I will try I know that works in the .csv file but I don't think I can import
using tha character.

 

[klmiura]

I have had this issue many times with the stuff that I import and there are a
couple different way one way that I find wonderful is this macro, It changes
all of those weird hidden characters so that excel reads it as a number and
not text.

Dim r As Range
Dim Count As Long
Count = 0
For Each r In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
If Application.IsText(r.Value) Then
If IsNumeric(r.Value) Then
r.Value = 1# * r.Value
r.NumberFormat = "General"
Count = Count + 1
End If
End If
Next
MsgBox (Count & " cells changed")
End Sub




Another way is to do the text to column, as you import you can choose the
format.