How to disable auto format

Hello All,

Simple but a little complicated question. I work for a Petroleum Products Lab. The instruments used for analysis export the data to an Excel file. 

Issue: Excel auto formats 349.0 to 349. This is a big issue because precisions are of high importance in this industry. Please let me how to overcome this problem.

Thanks a ton.

Ali

I don't know of a way that you can do this and retain the 'number' (that is you can format it as text).  It will only strip the .0 off it is is 'insignificant', e.g zero and you can put that back through formatting. That is, it will never strip off a significant digit.

Surely 349, 349.0, or even 349.00000000000 are the same? But 349.00000000001 is not???

Thanks for the reply.

How about a start up template? Is the are a way we can force a marco or something like that to achieve this?

Please let me know.

Thanks.

 Ali

You could import it as text (*.txt or no extension at all) and using the wizard mark the columns you wish to hold as there exact representation as text (it's the third step). Then to convert those to numbers with the correct number of decimals you could read each cell, find the period and then replicate that with a format.

Bear in mind however that Excel will only store the number as a whole if it has no 'significant' decimals the formatting will show correctly but if you select say 129.0 and look in the formula bar it will show as just 129. That's just how it is in Excel