I generating a excel sheet using jxl, a number of the columns have data that is
preceeded by a hidden apostrophe. The apostrophe can only be seen when you
click on the cell. I have looked and can't find a post that addresses this.
Can anyone out there tell me how to remove this using jxl or any other.
I've a feeling that the apostrophe indicates to Excel that the data in the cell should be treated as text.
Are you writing your cells to the spreadsheet as the correct types? E.g. jxl.write.Number, jxl.write.Label, jxl.write.DateTime, all of which implement jxl.write.WritableCell.
More information about how you're writing these cells, what data they contain and how it appears in Excel would be useful.
Related
Disclaimer - this should be a very simple task, but clearly everything I thought I knew about excel is false.
I'm trying to copy and paste data from a txt document to an excel document. An example of a line I'm trying to copy from the txt doc is: 4512544425701264.
However, when I paste into excel it pastes as 4512544425701260 but displays in the cell as 4.51254E+15. This happens for each line of data.
I've tried numerous ways to fix this problem none have worked including:
Copied the txt data into a Microsoft Word document, then tried
pasting into the excel.
Resized the cell.
Tried each cell formatting option.
Tried opening the txt doc in Excel, even progressed through the text import wizard. Interestingly, I noticed the data preview on page 3 displayed the data correctly. But after proceeding past the importer, the data loaded with the same problem.
Tried on another PC.
Copied and pasting one line at a time.
The only solution I have found is manually typing out each line, however this is highly unpractical due to the large amount of data.
Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
To show full number rightclick on cell, choose "Format cells..". In "Number" tab choose "Number" category and set "Decimal places" to zero.
Unfortunately excel lets to put only 15 digits as a number. Every additional number is converted to 0, that is why your number 4512544425701264 is converted to 4512544425701260
If you don't need this number to be used in calculation, you can format cells to text format before pasting:
Source on digits limitation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-US/office/troubleshoot/excel/last-digits-changed-to-zeros
In Excel, this is expected behavior (it's Microsoft, after all). I have encountered it frequently when dealing with UPC codes, for example. In order to avoid this, format the cells you are trying to copy this data to as "Text" BEFORE you copy any data over.
Copy your data (CTRL+C), then select the first cell in the range where the data is going, then paste only the values. This should take care of it.
If for some reason you still get scientific notation, provided the cells have the "Text" formatting, you can select that cell, click in the Formula bar and hit ENTER.
When you paste into Excel, try calling "Text import wizard" in the Paste Options. This will allow you to set delimiter (in case of CSV) and later data type of a column where you can select "Text" which will tell wizard not try to convert your data into numbers.
I have tried to find this scenario somewhere but haven't been able to find any useful resources.
Essentially, I have performed some work in Excel and upon returning to the file the row sizes were so large the file could not used properly, and the cells were blank. The row sizes was an easy fix, however the blank cells are strange because they still contain text/formulae.
Has anyone seen this issue before, and know how to fix it?
Thanks!!!!
In this image, you can see that the selected sell contains some text
Here, if I double click to edit the cell contents, there seems to be some kind of disconnect between the location of the cell, and where Excel is allowing me to edit the text
I think you should start working with "formulatext()" Excel function: if you have a formula, this returns a full string
I've seen issues like this in the past and have always first tried the "Text to Columns" Data Tool on the Data Menu. I have used this when cells are unexpectedly blank, or when my dates are registering as dates or formulas are registering as formulas. It might help.
I'm having a problem and havnt managed to find a solution online and was hoping I'd get lucky and someone could help.
I have a database application that exports a large dataset to .xlsx
A VBA application then maps this data into another Excel application.
When the data is exported out of the original database application, this process is outside of my control. All the cells have a 'General' cell format and we have some large numbers such as 172627108914 which is the serial number for a piece of equipment. In the exported xlsx file, this serial number is represented as 1.72627E+11.
The next stage of the process copies this data into another worksheet which has all cells formatted as text. The value is copied over but the value stays the same and the format of the cell changes from Text to General.
Does anyone know what I have to do to change to remove the scientific notation?
I'm using Microsoft Excel 2010.
Thanks
Append a single apostrophe to the front of the number. That will force Excel to read the number in 'text' format automatically, and the apostrophe will not show up at the front of the number when it's displayed.
Thanks for the help everyone, in the end some VBA code was written to convert all fields in the original export to text then iterate over each cell and rewriting the value from the formula line. This has resulted in a correctly formatted worksheet to pass to the second application
I want to print a row in Excel.
One row contains data for one project.
I want to print one row on one page nicely formatted. Meaning the value of one cell is the header and should be printed fat and centred, the other values should also be placed at fixed positions on the page.
Is this with VBA possible? When I was searching for this problem I only found results for printing a worksheet or a table or parts of it, but no results to use the values of the cells and formatting them.
Thanks in advance
As the other answers indicate, it is certainly possible in Excel VBA, but it is not really Excel's strong point.
What would typically be done to obtain the result you seem to be after is use a fully formatted Word document with fields that are then filled in with values from an Excel worksheet. You can even cheat a bit and use the Mail Merge \ Letter wizard to set everything up.
If you do want to do it all in Excel, you can find instructions and an example VBA macro here:
http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=4223
Template is a good way to do. With a macro there's better performance where it avoids the usage of volatile functions such as INDIRECT() However again it depends on how many volatile functions your worksheet carries.
Yes, it is possible when you use the Styles in excel. I know you can do Font formatting quite easily. Not sure about indenting it, but worth a try.
If style doesnt support it (it might in Excel 2010), you can always indent it via VBA (record a macro when you indent the values , it should look like this):
Selection.InsertIndent 1
Now this is a weird one
We have a project where we are reading some data from an Excel spreadsheet. Obviously this data has to be in a certain format. Some of the fields consists of numbers, but should be treated as text.
To stop Excel from being "smart" and change the cell types, I have set the format in the respective cells to 'text'.
Now here is the problem: some of the numbers we're pasting have spacing between the digits. When we remove the white spaces, Excel change the cell format to 'standard' and turn the text into the 2.42805E+11 format.
BUT: this only happens when the text is copied from some sources. If a paste a number copied from a textbox, everything turn out fine when we edit the spaces. If we copy the exact same number from a web page, Excel change cell format.
I thought copy-paste would be copy-paste, but obviously some formating or something gets along on the ride.
Does anyone know what causes this, or know have to get Excel to stop being "smart" with the formating?
EDIT: I found a somewhat peculiar solution to this. I recorded a macro that uses the 'Paste Special' function with text as parameter, and overrided ctrl-v with it (in that particular spreadsheet). Works like a charm! Feels a bit "hacky", though. Can anyone think of a scenario where this will backfire?
Try using the Edit Paste Special command, it will give you some controls to choose what to do with the data.
For a taste of the complexity of what is really going on underneath, look in MSDN about Clipboard Formats. In short, it isn't all Excel's fault...
A common user trick copying data out of excel is to paste it into Notepad and cut it back to the clipboard, which flattens all the formatting down to plain text. It won't help you for pasting data into Excel, however.
Copy-paste in windows retains formatting. One way to get rid of the formatting is to paste the text into e.g. notepad first, then select and copy it again. This loses any copied formatting.