Excel 2000 and the mysterious appearing ZEROS

[cousinconley]

I am asking this for someone else, so I will translate the best I can. Someone is entering in a series of numbers per row. Each row may contain a different amount of digits. For some reason, if you go past a certain amount of digets, it converts the last three to zeros.

Example:

123456789123456789 becomes 123456789123456000

I went back and had then try changing the cells to text format and got that funny looking equation when you enter in something that is wider than the row. The row has been expanded with no effect on the number.

Any suggestions?

 

[cousinconley]

I figured it out. The cell(s) must be formated to text before entering in the number.