c# - Scientific notation when importing from Excel in .Net

Question

I have a C#/.Net job that imports data from Excel and then processes it. Our client drops off the files and we process them. I don't have any control over the original file.

I use the OleDb library to fill up a dataset. The file contains some numbers like 30829300, 30071500, etc... The data type for those columns is "Text".

Those numbers are converted to scientific notation when I import the data. Is there anyway to prevent this from happening?

Answer 1

One workaround to this issue is to change your select statement, instead of SELECT * do this:

"SELECT Format([F1], 'General Number')  From [Sheet1$]"
 -or-
"SELECT Format([F1], "#####")  From [Sheet1$]"

However, doing so will blow up if your cells contain more than 255 characters with the following error: "Multiple-step OLE DB operation generated errors. Check each OLE DB status value, if available. No work was done."

Fortunately my customer didn't care about erroring out in this scenario.

This page has a bunch of good things to try as well: http://www.dicks-blog.com/archives/2004/06/03/external-data-mixed-data-types/