Morphed SKU Numbers on export to Excel

Thanks for the quick reply. I had thought of that myself and did the autofit. It does not change the cell contents, it just widens the column.

Excel automatically displays numbers with more than 11 digits as exponential expressions (E+11 means "times 10^11 or 100,000,000,000"). To change this, highlight the affected column and go to " Format | Cells ". Change the formatting from 'General' to 'Number' and set the 'Decimal Places' value to 0. This should display the barcodes as numbers only.

Second answer. I always catch myself on this too!

Thanks!!!!!! I think that's how I fixed it myself, but I blanked out while trying to remember that.

This is generally right, but BE CAREFUL. Sometimes Excel will round the numbers off when it reformats them. I don't know why it does this, but I've been burned more than once. Now I just don't open CSV files in Excel if I intend to import them.

Glenn Adams Tiber Creek C> Excel automatically displays numbers with more than 11 digits as

Even worse is when you have ILCs with leading zeros. I always open my .csv file with MS Word then copy/paste into Excel then use the Text to Columns... feature. The Text to Columns... dialog allows you to specify a format on a column by column basis. Selecting a text format for ILCs will preserve leading zeroes and prevent rounding.

Tom

"Glenn Adams [MVP - Retail Mgmt]" wrote:

So that opens up a whole other 'can of worms'. I need to export a report showing item#, description, price, on-hand and re-order qty. This is what my online store provider uses to generate and update my online inventory for me. If I have to hand-check every SKU # every week that will be very time-consuming.

Is there some preferred way to export the info I need in a way that is not suspect? Another similar business exports into MS Access. I suppose I could do that, if it's less risky, but it would require that I take the time to learn enough of Access to do it.

Thanks.

So that opens up a whole other 'can of worms'. I need to export a report showing item#, description, price, on-hand and re-order qty. This is what my online store provider uses to generate and update my online inventory for me. If I have to hand-check every SKU # every week that will be very time-consuming.

Is there some preferred way to export the info I need in a way that is not suspect? Another similar business exports into MS Access. I suppose I could do that, if it's less risky, but it would require that I take the time to learn enough of Access to do it.

Thanks.

-- WineGuy

"Glenn Adams [MVP - Retail Mgmt]" wrote:

Jeff,

Please note that my concern is in response to Glenn Adams' point that Excel will 'round' numbers (= CHANGE numbers) when the file is opened (or at least that's what I think he's saying). My provider does just open the file in a format that changes that colum to numeric, but what he seems to be saying is that the numbers could change. Could be that it only changes in Excel, not in whatever the provider is opening the file with. I just want to be careful that they get the correct items numbers when they open the file.

Well...... I'm told the provider opens the file in some app other than Excel, so I guess it's not an issue.