How to make Excel with zero before the number in C#

Question

I make from my program an excel file (xls or csv).

I send 00123 and in Excel I see 123

How I can send and see 00123

Thanks in advance

I'm happy to see you're always thanking us in advance - nice and polite. Just as a note: when you do, please use the proper spelling of "Thanks in advance" - there's no apostrophe in that phrase...... — marc_s, Dec 07 '10 at 06:37

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 07 '10 at 06:50

Its because excel is treating the data as 'numeric'. A simple way to force Excel to accept anything as text is to prepend an apostrophe to the text.

e.g. to write an integer 123 as 00000123 just write:

ActiveCell = "'" & Format(123, "00000000")

EDIT: Another solution is to set the Cells NumberFormatProperty to text:

Worksheet.GetRange(..).EntireColumn.NumberFormat = "@"

You might want to see this article: Excel Cell Auto Format

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 07 '10 at 06:33

2

In C# to see the CSV with the padding use

myVar.PadLeft(5,'0')

In Excel set the number format to custom 00000 or ZipCode

answered Dec 07 '10 at 06:33

Eric Fortis

thanks for the help, but it was only a sample there will be 000000000123 or 0123 - i dont know how many zeros will be – Gold Dec 07 '10 at 06:46
1

So how do you know how many you want to see? based on the biggest number? – Eric Fortis Dec 07 '10 at 06:48
what i send - this what i want to see – Gold Dec 07 '10 at 06:59
1

LOL, that's going to be the useless spreadsheet in the world. Why don't you create a Word document instead? – Eric Fortis Dec 07 '10 at 07:41

2 Answers2