How do I prevent Excel from putting 16 digit numbers into scienti.

[Anthony Rizk]

I've got a column of about 650 credit card numbers ( I work at a credit
union) and I want Excel to stop storing the numbers in the column as numbers
in scientific notation. The data originally came from a flat text file which
I then converted to Excel. I'm referring to this particular column from
within another piece of software which creates barcodes. When the barcoding
software looks at this particular column, it wants to display the column data
on the barcoding label as numbers in scientific notation such as
4.357869800980E+15. First, the number was never a decimal but Excel made it
one! I'm pretty fluent in Excel and this is one of those frustrating issues
I have with Excel! I can change formats and make the number display
differently, but when it comes right down to it, they still are being read by
the barcoding software as numbers in scientific notation....something I don't
want or need. The software is displaying the number as it stored in MS
Excel...not how it is displaying!

Am I converting the flat text file the wrong way to an Excel file?

 

[Fred Smith]

Format the cells as text.

Excel supports only 15 digits of precision, so even if you got out of
scientific format, it would lost the last digit. As you never want to do
arithmetic on a credit card number, treat it as text.

 

[RagDyer]

You should format the cells as "Text" *before* you enter the numbers.

Also, on a cell by cell basis, you could simply precede the data entry with
an apostrophe ( '123 ...), which will tell XL that it's text.
--

HTH,

RD
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Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit!
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Format the cells as text.

Excel supports only 15 digits of precision, so even if you got out of
scientific format, it would lost the last digit. As you never want to do
arithmetic on a credit card number, treat it as text.