Ok, so I am generating a CSV file (where "C" obviously stands for
"semicolon") and sending it out to commercial folks so that they distribute
relevant information to [friendly] customers for trials.

The file has a number of rows with three columns each, like this:

something;something else;1234567890123456

The attachments are opened in Excel - by default - and the user sees

something   something else    1.234E15

If that were all, I would probably get a friendly WTF mail from the
commercial guy, and look for a way to solve the "problem".  But no.  When
the cell with "1.234E15" is clicked, the Excel helpfully displays the
complete number in the input field at the top.  That number is
1234567890123450.

I am glad those customers are supposed to be friendly;  the future
friendliness of the commercial guy depends on the number of "oops" mails he
has to send now.

I experimented a bit, and

1234567890123456
 1234567890123456 
"1234567890123456"

are all silently and without complaint converted to a floating point number.

'1234567890123456' gets converted to '1234567890123456', which is better,
but only slightly.

Graaaaah!
-- 
We're going for 'working' here. 'clean' is for people with skills...
-- Flemming Jacobsen

Reply via email to