Problem with losing leading zeros

[Guest]

Greetings Folks

I am losing leading zeros - when I create a tab seperated text file, leading zeros are retained.

BUT then I need to save the file as an Excel file - which means importing tab seperated file into Excel & then saving it there. (this is the format required for uploading my stuff to a specific web site) - at this point all my leading zeros disappear from view.

I have tried importing data both as General & Text format - with the same result

Any help appreciated

Regards

Sean O'D

London

[slstrother]

If the leading zeros are in the tab separated text file, then the import into Excel is the problem. The field that has the leading zeros must be imported as text. When you open the file in Excel, the Text Import Wizard should pop up. After you select data type and tab as the delimiter, the next screen shows all of the fields, highlight the field with leading zeros and select "text" for the column data format, then hit Finish. The leading zeros should be in the field (cell) in Excel.

Hope this helps

[Sean O'Donoghue]

Many thanks for that - I was just selected "text" for the data format, without selected the column to apply it to.

I am now having another problem - one of the fields imported to Excel, when opened in file saved as a txt file in Excel, is in inverted commas ie "field" - and in the database it is nothing I am aware of which differentiates it from the other fields, which show without these inverted commas - very strangely, there are the odd field which does not have them - 2 out of 60 records I tested.

[slstrother]

It sounds like the data in Filemaker is enclosed in " " or Excel is adding them. If the " " are in Filemaker, you can create a calc field and use the Substitute function to remove of them, then export the calc field. If Excel is adding them, use Replace under the Edit menu to remove them.

[Sean O'Donoghue]

Thanks for that - it worked a threat

Regards

Sean O'D