Excel fun!

[bugshaw]

If you have a list of organisation codes in a csv file that you distribute, and they go in a nice alphabetical order like this:
8A001
8A003
...
8DY95
8DY99
8E004
8E008
8E017

then when you open it in Excel (which seems a fairly straightforward thing to do) the codes come out like this:
8A001
8A003
...
8DY95
8DY99
80000
800000000
800000000000000000

Let me fix that for you myself...

Comments

[dalmeny]

Argh, I can see why it might do that. Time for the judicious application of a '.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Now I know to import it as a text file and set the code column to Text, it's fine. Except for the organisation with the name "2E2". But now I know to set the name column to text as well when I import the file...

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Excel does loads of fun things like that. If you have a bunch of user ids that are things like abc23, then you have one like dec23, the latter gets automatically transformed into December 23 {current-year}. So, as you've found, you have to set the column to text when you import it, so it doesn't try to be Too Bloody Clever.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I think there are a bunch of genetic things like that too.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Oh never seen that one before. Good old 5e2 I'm well acquainted with.......

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

yeah. I've been bitten by that. Proteins called things like Sept4. Annoyingly, you can't even reverse it cos you can't tell if it used to be Sept4 or Sep4.