Yes, and then you save it, you open it again... same behaviour. The only way I found around it was to insert a character at the beginning of every element in such columns. An apostrophe works, but it looks ugly. Yes, when loading the data in R you could easily clean it up automatically... doable. You can add a space. Then it will not show, but you have to remember that if you ever use the data for labels etc. You shouldn't need to do that in the first place...
Jose Quoting Erich Neuwirth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > There is a hack to get around the problem. > It is definitely not a good solution, just a hack. > > Open the .csv file in a text editor and select everything. > Paste it into an empty Excel sheet. > Then use Data -> Text to Columns > > The third dialog box (at least it is the third one in Excel 2003) > allows you to format each column of the data. This is the place where > you can switch off the date interpretation of your ID column. > > AUG1838 probably is not onterpreted as date because Excel dates only > start at 1/1/1900. > > > Duncan Murdoch wrote: >> On 8/28/2007 3:16 AM, J Dougherty wrote: >>> On Monday 27 August 2007 22:21, David Scott wrote: >>>> On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Robert A LaBudde wrote: >>>>> If you format the column as "Text", you won't have this problem. By >>>>> leaving the cells as "General", you leave it up to Excel to guess at >>>>> the correct interpretation. >>>> Not true actually. I had converted the column to Text because I saw the >>>> interpretation as a date in the .xls file. I saved the .csv file *after* >>>> the column had been converted to Text. Looking at the .csv file in a text >>>> editor, the entry is correct. >>>> >>>> I have just rechecked this. >>>> >>>> On reopening the .csv using Excel, the entry AUG2699 had been interpreted >>>> as a date, and was showing as Aug-99. Most bizarre is that the NHI value >>>> of AUG1838 has *not* been interpreted as a date. >>>> > > -- > Erich Neuwirth, University of Vienna > Faculty of Computer Science > Computer Supported Didactics Working Group > Visit our SunSITE at http://sunsite.univie.ac.at > Phone: +43-1-4277-39464 Fax: +43-1-4277-39459 > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > > -- Dr. Jose I. de las Heras Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology Phone: +44 (0)131 6513374 Institute for Cell & Molecular Biology Fax: +44 (0)131 6507360 Swann Building, Mayfield Road University of Edinburgh Edinburgh EH9 3JR UK -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.