dmbfan 9 Posted March 14, 2012 Report Share Posted March 14, 2012 So I am creating a page scraper that pulls in account numbers from a site. Typically the account numbers are in the format 111-222-333. There really isn't any standard number of numbers or dashes and I am able to scrape them all fine into a column into a .csv file. The problem occurs when an account number happens to hit a number pattern that matches a date. (i.e. 3-3-09). My .csv file then tries to be helpful and converts the value to a date 03/03/09. While I am all for helpfulness, this really screws things up for me and I can't figure out how to make it stop doing it. When I go into format cells and try to change it from a date format to general or text, it then converts the date to the numeric value for that date instead of the scraped data of 3-3-09. This really isn't even a ubot issue probably, but I am just looking to see if there is away around this. Thanks for any help people can give. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
a2mateit 395 Posted March 14, 2012 Report Share Posted March 14, 2012 I know it sounds like a very simple fix, but you can try saving it as a .txt with comma separated values when setting it up. If it's not absolutely critical that you open it back up as a .csv, it won't automatically convert. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
LoWrIdErTJ - BotGuru 904 Posted March 14, 2012 Report Share Posted March 14, 2012 is it ubot converting it or when you open it in excel? in excell format your table cells to text only and it wont do that. but for a csv it should save it in ubot properly. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JohnB 255 Posted March 14, 2012 Report Share Posted March 14, 2012 Yeah...it's an excel formatting issue...As Justin suggested, you really don't need to use Excel to accomplish what you want to do. (a csv file IS a text file and can be viewed as such) John Quote Link to post Share on other sites
dmbfan 9 Posted March 19, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2012 Thanks, I've set up the bot so that it saves the file as both a .csv and as a.txt for the client. The data in the .txt file looks correct and it is an excel/open office formatting issue. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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