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. > Actually, in Excel 2000, he's right. What you have to is be sure of is that the "'" that denotes a text entry precedes EVERY entry that can be confused with a date. Selecting the entire column and setting the format to "text" *before* data is entered does this. It will also create an appropriate *.csv file. Excel is notable too because it will automatically convert "date-like" entries as you type. In a column of IDs or similar critical data, that behaviour is really bad. I have never tried the MS site, but I haven't been able to find any entry about how to turn that particular automatic behaviour off.
However, while I have not experimented extensively, as far as I have experimented, OpenOffice spreadsheet does not behave this way. JWDougherty PS, I quit using Excel for most important work after it returned a negative variance on some data I was collecting descriptive statistics on. JWD ______________________________________________ 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.