Question

so I have this HTML table with a bunch of big numbers in it that I want to open in Excel 2007… you can follow along at home:

<table>
<tr>
    <td>this is a big number</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>1111111</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2335322864</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>23353228641</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>233532286418</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2335322864187</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>23353228641877</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>233532286418777</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2335322864187774</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>23353228641877745</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>233532286418777456</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>2335322864187774562</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>23353228641877745623</td>
</tr><tr>
    <td>233532286418777456238</td>
</tr>

when I open this file in Excel it starts converting those numbers to scientific notation when they get over 10 digits in length… and in doing so, it starts changing the actual number and replaces least significant digits to zeros

how can I tell Excel not to do this?

Answer 1

Make them strings, for example by putting quotes around them (or in front). Not exactly ideal, but you can later replace all the quotes with nothing.