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I am entering 1044372000263084 into a cell in Excel 2013. When I hit enter the cell is changing to 1.04437E + 15 . The bar above the table shows 104437200063080.

Why is it changing and how can I make it stop?

nixda
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user347013
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  • Format an empty cell as text. Right click on the cell, select Format Cells, set the format to Text. Take a long number like 1240800388917 and paste it in to the text formatted cell. Now, the cell is displayed as a string and not in scientific notation.The results remaining in scientific notation even though the cell is formatted as text just seems broken to me. I've seen suggested work-arounds like: use CSV import and set the format to text, add a space character to the beginning of each numeric string, and others. – user347013 Jul 16 '14 at 17:39

2 Answers2

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Select the cells where you are going to input, hit Control + 1 to format cells, select "Number" under the Number tab (optionally, set Decimal places to zero), hit OK. Now, long numbers entered into the cells just formatted will appear without scientific notation.

D Schlachter
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  • This will fail since the number precision in Excel is limited to 15 digits. So while it won't be scientific notation, the actual value will go from 1044372000263084 to 1044372000263080. – ernie Jul 16 '14 at 17:40
  • Found a solution: Format an empty cell as text. Right click on the cell, select Format Cells, set the format to Text. Take a long number like 1240800388917 and paste it in to the text formatted cell. Now, the cell is displayed as a string and not in scientific notation.The results remaining in scientific notation even though the cell is formatted as text just seems broken to me. I've seen suggested work-arounds like: use CSV import and set the format to text, add a space character to the beginning of each numeric string, and others. – user347013 Jul 16 '14 at 17:40
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Excel will treat the content aimed for a cell as TEXT,
if the data to go into that cell has a single quote as first character.
="The char: "&CHAR(39) in a cell will show that character.

=VALUE(ADDRESS) will allow you to use the number.

Hannu
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