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AdamDeLorenzo's avatar
AdamDeLorenzo
Copper Contributor
Oct 24, 2024

Why does Excel STILL automatically remove zeroes at the start of numbers I export into the program?

Seriously, who designed this godawful application? It's needlessly "helpful", just auto-formatting all my information into whatever dumb setting it wants. I have to export 500 barcodes into a sheet and organize them but of course Excel HAS to jump in and remove ALLLLLLLLL the zeroes at the start so I need to waste my time going in and formatting all the cells to "text" (otherwise they'll just keep "helpfully" re-formatting all my data without asking me).

 

Oh man, and don't even get me started on trying to type the number "102320241016" into a cell. For some reason Excel decided that should be a scientific notation and constantly changes it to "1.0232E+11".

 

Honestly why is this a feature? Who thought that we'd all want this? Why is EVERY Microsoft product I am forced to use for job so excessively anti-user? Between excel, teams, and outlook like an hour of my day ends up being spent trying to parse my way through these bloated, poorly running applications. It's like they're all designed to try and help but the way they "help" is by being as annoying and in the way as possible which just ends up slowing down everyone who actually knows what they're doing.

2 Replies

  • Harun24HR's avatar
    Harun24HR
    Bronze Contributor

    Why not you type a single quote in-front of 102320241016. Just write '102320241016 so Excel will not convert it scientific numbers. I would suggest you learn Excel first then start to use it. Tell your barcode software designer to export data as text instead of numbers. Don't blame Excel rather blame to barcode software.

  • What version of Excel do you have?  There are data conversion options that you can set so that Excel does not remove your leading zeros.

     

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/excelgeneral/why-does-excel-still-automatically-remove-zeroes-at-the-start-of-numbers-i-expor/4278458

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