>>>Hi All:
>>>
>>>I have a table with a character field. I COPY it to an XLS. In the case that the data in the field is numeric, I want the data to be numeric in the XLS file. Right now it comews across as text since it came from a character field. The field must be character, since it sometimes contains data that is not numeric.
>>>
>>>Any ideas?
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>
>>>Yossi
>>
>>I'm not sure you can have different formats in the same column. It may be either numeric or character, AFAIK.

Actually, that is not a problem, since for a given COPY, they will all be numeric, so I envisage something like:

COPY fields Numericify(CharField1) TO ("c:\junk\junk") xls

CharField1is a character field