>>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
>
>You could open the XKS file using ole automation with Excel and format the columns as numeric. Excel will leave the text as text and convert the numbers to numbers this way. They would need to have Excel loaded on their machine.

I will do that if I have to, but I would rather avoid automation, in case Excel is not on the machine.