Comments on: Stop Excel Using Scientific Notation on Numbers

By: hertz kot

hertz kot — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:21:37 +0000

Very very helpful, thank you so much!

By: Chrissy

Chrissy — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:07:51 +0000

It is only a great solution until you try and batch edit the numbers, like do a find and replace on a “-” or remove a letter like a “P” so that you isolate the number. Then, you will happily find scientific notation again and conversion of the sixteenth digit to a zero.

I understand precision, but I turned it off because it does not calculate values based on what you see. It does not store it that way.

So, what is the solution? I can’t keep text as text or even trust the numbers that I am using!

By: MStokely

MStokely — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:11:54 +0000

The only way I know to store a large number in Excel (15 characters) or less in a column column but force Excel NOT to store or display it in scientific notation is the following:

1. Change the column format for your numbers to TEXT (right-click column header and choose format and then text as the format). You may still see the numbers in scientific notation, so do number 2 next.
2. Starting on the first row for that column, select it and click F2 twice. That resets the number from being a number plus translates it into text format. (using the down arrow keys do this for all your values in the text clumn).

* You can also set up a text formatted column and past the numbers into it.

This also solves numerous data import and export issues when moving data between say a CSV, Access DB, or SQL Server and Excel. If you dont translate the numbers to TEXT format and then reset the scientific notation displayed, these other programs read whats displayed (not stored in Excel) which will pull the scientific notation values for these numbers, which is NOT what you want.

By: SKJ

SKJ — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:45:26 +0000

Why thanks a heap, saved me a lot of faffing

By: Bruce Rickford

Bruce Rickford — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:04:58 +0000

Greetings folks, just thought I might offer another solution in Excel helpful for processing data feeds.

Format Cells –> click Custom, then type “000000000000″ (or 13 0′s for EAN), click ok.

Entries that start with 0 are shown properly, and scientific notation is eliminated. You can now save to text tab delimited or csv with no worries.

Cheers,

Bruce

By: Arlo

Arlo — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 23:49:09 +0000

I found if you no longer have the .csv file you can copy the column or row of numbers from Excel into Notepad or Ultraedit. Then copy from Notepad and “paste value” as text back into Excel.

By: mike

mike — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:03:29 +0000

something that worked for me for upc codes was to go into format data cells… under the data types… I selected Custom and just put a bunch of #’s and it stopped as well.

By: J.B.C.

J.B.C. — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:35:58 +0000

Excel is so messed up it takes a community to figure it out. I bookmarked this post on my blog so I can find it the next time I need to do this. Thanks so much !

By: Scott Young

Scott Young — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:09:00 +0000

Great solution. I feel like I run into issues with how excel formats/interprets the data pretty much every time I break out vlookup. It’s not often that I can find a quick and easy solution to the problem online, but you nailed it on both fronts. Thanks for the post.

By: NZ Tom

NZ Tom — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 03:21:40 +0000

Awesome. Cheers