Question

I am pulling two fields and putting them together with a “-“. When I export to excel it seems to think that the string is a date and converts it from 11-11 to 11-Nov. I can’t seem to figure out how to fix this.

I am exporting a gridview into excel. This asp.net using .net 3.5 and vb.net within VS 2008.

    Response.Clear()

    Response.Buffer = True

    'grab filename from filename box
    'if does not exist then do default naming
    Dim filename As String
    If filenameTextBox2.Text <> "" Then
        filename = "attachment;filename=" + filenameTextBox2.Text + ".xls"
    Else
        filename = "attachment;filename=GridViewExport.xls"
    End If

    Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", filename)

    Response.Charset = ""

    Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"



    Dim sw As New IO.StringWriter()

    Dim hw As New HtmlTextWriter(sw)



    GridView1.AllowPaging = False

    GridView1.DataBind()


    'Change the Header Row back to white color

    GridView1.HeaderRow.Style.Add("background-color", "#FFFFFF")



    'Apply style to Individual Cells

    'GridView1.HeaderRow.Cells(0).Style.Add("background-color", "green")

    'GridView1.HeaderRow.Cells(1).Style.Add("background-color", "green")

    'GridView1.HeaderRow.Cells(2).Style.Add("background-color", "green")

    'GridView1.HeaderRow.Cells(3).Style.Add("background-color", "green")



    For i As Integer = 0 To GridView1.Rows.Count - 1

        Dim row As GridViewRow = GridView1.Rows(i)



        'Change Color back to white

        row.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.White



        'Apply text style to each Row

        row.Attributes.Add("class", "textmode")



        'Apply style to Individual Cells of Alternating Row

        If i Mod 2 <> 0 Then

            'row.Cells(0).Style.Add("background-color", "#C2D69B")

            'row.Cells(1).Style.Add("background-color", "#C2D69B")

            'row.Cells(2).Style.Add("background-color", "#C2D69B")

            'row.Cells(3).Style.Add("background-color", "#C2D69B")

        End If

    Next

    GridView1.RenderControl(hw)



    'style to format numbers to string

    Dim style As String = "<style>.textmode{mso-number-format:\@;}</style>"

    Response.Write(style)

    Response.Output.Write(sw.ToString())

    Response.Flush()

    Response.End()

Answer 1

Try adding a Single Quote (‘) before your content.