crystal does not recognize a data type of text

[huytonscouser]

I have a simple 2 column excel spreadsheet with 29k rows.

The 1st column does contain numbers, but i selected format cells/text and then saved the file as an excel .xls file.

However whenever i use the data source in crystal, the 1st column/field is always datatype number, and i do not see the text type fields, even if i create a formula totext(datafield).

How, or what can i do to the original data source ? i have tried saving as .csv.

i have crystal 12.3.0.601 sp3

 

[hilfy]

In a CSV file, numbers have to be enclosed in quotes in order for them to be "seen" as text. In Excel, they have to be preceded by a single quote.

How is the spreadsheet created? If it's based on a SQL query, you need to convert the numbers to text inside the query before they're output to a file.

-Dell

A computer only does what you actually told it to do - not what you thought you told it to do.

 

[lbass]

See the very end of this thread: thread149-1516532: report field won't display characters properly. Using the text to column wizard in Excel seemed to do the trick.

-LB

 

[huytonscouser]

Excellent, thanks. that worked. Plus if i sorted column 1 so that alpha data was in 1st row, column was automatically set to text, and showed as string(255) in crystal.