# Excel question regarding cell formatting of imported data

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-regarding-cell-formatting-of-imported-data/307958>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 12, 2005, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-regarding-cell-formatting-of-imported-data/307958 "2005-06-12T08:40:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-regarding-cell-formatting-of-imported-data/307958/1 "2005-06-12T08:40:09Z")

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Hi all,

I have a spreadsheet with two columns of data imported from an Access file. The numbers in the Access file are in this format: 1234.5 and 12345.6; I want them to be displayed as: 12 34.5 and 123 45.6 in the Excel spreadsheet.

Using the custom format option in “format cells” is not working. I have tried the following custom format: 00 00.0 and 000 00.0 and although it works fine for data entered directly into the spreadsheet, it won’t work for the imported data.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can fix this? I do not want to reformat the Access data directly.

Thank you in advance,

Ray.

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-regarding-cell-formatting-of-imported-data/307958/2 "2005-06-12T12:02:50Z")

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Ok, in the time since I posted the question, I’ve figured it out for myself.

The Access file had the data columns formatted as “text”. This seemed to overide any formatting I tried to apply in Excel. By redefining the Access columns as “number”, and going through a frustrating trial and error process trying to figure out what it was doing with my decimal places, I fixed the problem.

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**Author:** ![Tomcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Tomcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tomcat)\
**Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-regarding-cell-formatting-of-imported-data/307958/3 "2005-06-12T13:02:31Z")

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If you ever have this problem in Excel and cannot acces the Access file, try multiplying the cell by 1 (i.e. in cell B1 “=A1\*1”) then copy\>paste special…as values those numbers and then applying the format you want. That little trick has worked on many a data set that were in some strange format…don’t know why.

-Tcat