Excel: Text to column

[superunknown98]

Hey everyone, I have a quick question for excel users. I'm trying to open a raw data file with no delimiters using the text to column in excel. It works, however I have one qualm with it. Everytime A column has more than 1 zero in it, excel will consolidate them.

For example column 2 is: "0000000" but excel will just show "0". Is there anyway to get excel to keep the origonal amount of digit places?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!


Edit: Do i really have to use special cell formatting and then type the amount of zero's to show? I have about 40 columns, why can't Excel just show what is imported?

 

[abaez]

Have you tried column format set to TEXT?

 

[superunknown98]

yes, that just consolidates all the zero's. I really wish the originating program had just exported the data as a csv file at least. Instead it just counts the columns. Eg. column 2 starts at line 5.

I bet a script or macro could probably do this aswell.

 

[Fardringle]

When importing the text, on step 3 of the import (in Excel 2000, should be the same in others), select each individual column and set the data type to TEXT. This will make Excel keep all of the data exactly the way it is in the original file.

 

[GrumpyMan]

Originally posted by: Fardringle
When importing the text, on step 3 of the import (in Excel 2000, should be the same in others), select each individual column and set the data type to TEXT. This will make Excel keep all of the data exactly the way it is in the original file.

This is correct and to expand on this a little bit, hold down the Shift key on step 3, scroll to the last column and then click on the last column and it will highlight all the columns at once, then change to text.

 

[superunknown98]

Ah so I see you are right, thank you very much sirs. Of Course now I need a macro to do this, as it has to be done everyday. So I continue my search. Thanks.