Excel: Text May Be Lost When Saving in a DBF File FormatLast reviewed: November 30, 1994Article ID: Q74618 |
The information in this article applies to:
SUMMARYWhen a Microsoft Excel database is saved in dBASE format (DBF 2, DBF 3, DBF 4), the first record beneath the field names is used to determine the data type assigned to each field. Data can be lost if a field contains a mixture of numbers and text. To avoid this problem, each field should contain only one type of data.
MORE INFORMATIONIf the first cell in a field contains a numeric entry, Microsoft Excel assumes that the rest of the data in the column is also numeric. If there are any textual entries, these are skipped and blank entries result. If the first cell in a field contains a textual entry, any numbers in the same column are written as text.
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KBCategory: kbusage
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