howdy all,

some excel files are giving me a bit of a headache.

when i import zipcodes (into fm7) on some files the first zero will drop out. i tried opening the excel file and making sure that the zero's were there and then tried switching the column format around a couple times but that didn't seem to work. anybody have this problem? i was able to make a script to put them back but i figure i'm missing somethin'.

thanks!

big dan

I just tried this on a limited set of zip codes and the outcome was successful. I did have to format the column in Excel to be TEXT. The default was GENERAL and that seems to drop leading zeros.

Also, make sure the FM field is text. From a programmatic perspective, a Zip code is actually text, because there's no real meaning in, say, Zip code * 2, or inequality operators -- anything we normally associate with numbers is useless for Zip codes.

Jerry

thanks for the quick posts. i just went into one of the excel files and when i switch the format to text the first 0 disapears. perhaps it's a problem with the way i received the excel file. . .

You could also use an Excel formula to create a new column, and then import that column:

=Concatenate("0",A1)

Using whatever cell you have the Zip code in instead of A1.

J