[SalesForce] Visualforce to Excel: Prevent long number from being displayed in Scientific Notation

I have a Visual page which offers the capability of exporting a data table to Excel.

There is a text field called Account number. Some account numbers are more than 12 digits long. When such numbers are exported to Excel, they are shown by default in the scientific format.

12345678912345 becomes 1.23457E+13

Currently my code for this column is:

  <apex:column headerValue="Account Number">                   
            <apex:outputText value="{!mt.Account_Number__c}"/>                                     
   </apex:column>

I tried using different formatting options but they didn't work. Also tried using Apex:OutputField without success.

I tried some solutions like adding css but that did not help either.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4619909/format-html-table-cell-so-that-excel-formats-as-text

I know this is Excel's default behavior with numbers with 12 digits or more.
Any ideas as to how I can force it to display them as Strings in my Visual force page?

Thanks.

Best Answer

Try to insert html blanks to the start and end of the string:

<apex:column headerValue="Account Number">                   
    <apex:outputText value="&nbsp;{!mt.Account_Number__c}&nbsp;" escape="false"/>
</apex:column>

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] Number format string being displayed on Visualforce page

As per my comment, I've seen this sort of behaviour before with String.format() and single quotes in the string formatting argument. See APEX String.format(); Syntax - escaping single quotes.

The unprocessed output your seeing with outputText seems very similar. I'd look for a single quote in value of !person.

With the benefit of hindsight now that you've confirmed that is is the case it makes more sense. {!person} is being substituted directly into the value and the {!amount} is being formatted in via a param. So half way through the substitution is more like:

> value="John O'Connor just closed an Opportunity worth ${0,number,###,###,###,##0}!"

As you found, escaping this single quote will resolve this issue. Another alternative would be using a param for person as well.

[SalesForce] How to Prevent long number from being displayed in Scientific Notation in VF page

This worked:

      for (i = 0; i < records.length; i++) {
          for (j in records[i]) {
              cellValue = records[i][j]; 
              if (cellValue) {
                   if(!isNaN(cellValue)){
                      records[i][j] = Number(cellValue).toPrecision();
                   }        
              }
           }
      }

And then passing records in datatable like this: "aaData": records

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] Number format string being displayed on Visualforce page

[SalesForce] How to Prevent long number from being displayed in Scientific Notation in VF page

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