Re:Data Organization in Spreadsheets
by cm2187 on Monday August 20, 2018 @02:43PM
(#17802622)
Excel has many other sins. If you have a long numeric ID in a csv file, it will import it as a floating point and truncate (round) the ID.
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Learn how to use the "From Text" wizard importer...
Once you have are aware of it there are ways around that. The problem is that this will surprise I think pretty much anyone who hasn't been bitten yet. When you double click on a csv file, it just opens it. Then you have some weird behavior of things not matching when they should.
Re:Data Organization in Spreadsheets
by smhenderson on Monday August 20, 2018 @04:29PM
(#17803652)
Yeah, it's a pain. Zip Codes that begin with zero, FedEx tracking numbers, as you mentioned any long numbers. All of these gotchas have a work-around but they can be very tedious to look for and address. The worst part is that when you think you've fixed whatever needed fixing, save the CSV file and then remember something you missed and reopen it all of your first round changes are lost.
I've gotten in the habit of saving a copy to Excel first, then to CSV again. If I realize I still have a bug in my CSV copy I reopen the Excel version so any earlier formatting edits I've made are still intact.
Re:Data Organization in Spreadsheets
by reitanqild on Monday August 20, 2018 @11:41PM
(#17806780)
I've yet to find a reliable way to prevent Excel from destroying dates (or seeing dates in other data) though. In this regard I prefer LibreOffice. (Or SQLite, if I'm the only person working on it.)
I might have missed something obvious though so feel free to point it out. Google failed me though.
Use From Text or Get & Transform...you can tell Excel how to Type each column.