• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

POI Converting Long Number to Sciebtific Notarion

 
Ranch Hand
Posts: 173
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
To start off, I Googled this and couldn't find any good answer; most of the time, the questioner never received a response or they were told to go to the Apache POI website, and I couldn't find any answers there, either. I am uploading a spreadsheet and processing it through a Java program using Apache POI.

The problem I've encountered is that we have a column called source_cd that can contain any 10-character combination of numbers and characters. The issue we have comes into play when a user enters all numbers for a cell in this column. POI is converting the number to scientific notation, so a number like 1234567890 becomes 1.29532E9. I know the work-around is to put a tic in front of the number to force it to be read as text, but we don't want the users to have to do this. A number, even if treated as a double, should be read as a number and not converted. Is there any way to force this?

Thanks very much for any help.
 
Rancher
Posts: 43081
77
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
To ask the obvious: Is the cell type set to string (and not to number)?
 
Pat Flickner
Ranch Hand
Posts: 173
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
It is general formatting, so POI automatically reads a number as a numeric field because even if it's general format, Excel automatically converts numbers not specifically formatted as text (read the tic (') mark) as numeric fields. So yes, it is a numeric field if there's a number in it. And if it's a number, POI treats it as a double regardless of its actual state.
 
Pat Flickner
Ranch Hand
Posts: 173
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Figured it out -- I don't know why it never occurred to anyone, but I created a long variable and cast the cell as a long. That did the trick. Simplest solution. Son of a gun.



Worked like a charm.

I'm beginning to get why they call me Merlin.
 
A day job? In an office? My worst nightmare! Comfort me tiny ad!
a bit of art, as a gift, the permaculture playing cards
https://gardener-gift.com
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic