Importing An Excel CSV File

[Fairlight]

Four score and seven years--eh, screw that!  At about Mon, Nov 15, 2004 at
09:14:56PM -0600, Art Moore blabbed on about:
> When I save the EXCEL file as a .csv file so I can import it problems
> developed with what the EXCEL file lists as phone and FAX numbers.  In
> the .csv file many of what should be phone numbers turn to exponential
> form.  This only happens with phone numbers that are entered as just
> a string of numbers like 1234567890.  When the entry is listed as
> 123-456-7890 there is no problem.
>
> When the entry of 1234567890 is hi-lited an exclamation mark appears and
> says 'the number in this cell is formatted as text or has an apostrophe
> at the beginning'.  The entry does have an apostrophe at the beginning.

I've seen references to people saying that numbers that they wanted to be
whole show up as decimals if they don't use an apostrophe.  I believe the
apostrophe means it should be treated as a string.  I've no idea why it
would exponentiate.

> Even if I change the format to a number left justified (or text) and save
> it, when I re-open the file it is back to the exponential form.
>
> What am I doing or not doing to make these entries correct and stay that
> way when saved an opened as .csv file.  Formatting as special/phone
> number does not do anything either.

If you're exporting, and I'm reading the docs correctly, you have to have
something like:

export [SOMETYPE] alias
...
alias(10)=14

...etc.

How about taking a dummy or declared field -with- a proper phone edit, and
using it as a middle-man?  Assuming your phone number was in field 14, say:

ProperPhone=14;alias(10)=ProperPhone

Then you've formatted them for the export, they should show up properly in
Excel like the others do, but you don't at all have to change the actual
data in your database at any point--it's only done on the fly during export.

This work for you, or is there some reason it won't?

mark->
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