Prevent Converstion of Long Numeric Strings to Exponential Format 1

[bhujanga]

I have data with serial numbers that are up to 20 digits in length. They are alpha numeric but sometimes only happen to have numbers. When that is the case Excel converts them to Exponential numerics as soon as it sees them. The only way I can restore the text version is to manually insert an apostrophe at the beginning. But since I import them by the thousands, this is not feasible. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?
Thanks.

 

[combo]

Format range with serials as text before writing/pasting data. Excel will display full number as text, without rounding, what happens for 20-digit number.

combo

 

[bhujanga]

I thought that would work but it still does it - very frustrating. I did however come up with a solution to convert them that is working. I put a new column next to them and put in the formula:
=text(A1,"####################")
That seems to do the trick. It keeps all the alphas as they are and doesn't create any additional spaces if the string is shorter than the 20 characters in the mask. I can then convert those formulaic results to values and they keep the desired formatting.
Thanks for replying!

 

[combo]

Excel numbers can have up to 15 sifnificant digits. Even if the result of formula (TEXT...) contains 20 characters, if A1 is number, last five are zeroed - value in A1 is not precise enough. Instead, if it is possible to divide the serials to two parts, they can be finally combined with two TEXT formulas.

combo

 

[remeng]

Try this article. It goes over several different methods to convert numbers to text.

Link