Comments on: Credit Card Numbers

By: Francis

Francis — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:33:00 +0000

Oops...that formula should have read

=TEXT(A1,"0000-0000-0000-0000")

By: Joe Smith

Joe Smith — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:16:00 +0000

Fucking Microsoft!!! These fucking morons never considered that folks would want to store their credit card numbers in a spreadsheet?!? Microsoft’s Motto: “WE MAKE UR LIFE DIFFICULT”!

By: rajesh

rajesh — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:05:00 +0000

Hi Francis,

I tried your solution but it gave me the same error as 16th digit changed to ZERO

By: Francis Hayes

Francis Hayes — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:31:00 +0000

Regarding the macro Blu suggested, an important point was missed from the original posting on Ozgrid. To avoid truncating the 16th digit before the macro even fires, the target range must first be formatted as Text. Then when the 16-digit number is entered into the cell, Excel treats it as Text and doesn't drop the last digit. When the macro fires, it creates a custom text format #### #### #### ####.

FWIW, the formula =TEXT(A1,"#### #### #### ####") will return a similarly formatted number from a cell that is formatted as Text (i.e. 1234567890123456 will give you 1234 5678 9012 3456.

By: arul

arul — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:44:00 +0000

IN VBA PRGRAMMING, HOW TO SEARCH 16 DIGIT CREDIT CARD NUMBER IN EXCEL COLUMNS?

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Mike -

You're confusing numerical values and text strings. Excel can store 32,767 characters in a cell (though it can only display 1024 characters). This is way more than the 16 characters of a credit card number. Obviously the number is stored in the file as a text string, if all 16 digits are shown.

Excel's numerical engine can handle 15 digits of precision. As soon as you perform a mathematical operation on a text string that contains only numerical characters, that string is coerced into a numerical value, and it switches from 1024 (or 32k) characters to 15 digits.

By: Dick Kusleika

Dick Kusleika — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:23:00 +0000

I don’t know Mike, but I’d guess that storing large numbers is easy and calculating with large numbers is hard.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:43:00 +0000

OK. This is really annoying. I am having the same issue with 16 digit numbers. The annoying part is that the actual number is there. I have a file of about 44K records, each with a unique 16 digit number as one of the fields. The number is stored in the file correctly. If I perform a mail merge using the data, the number prints correctly. If I import the file into SAS, the number imports correctly. If I try to just look at it’s value in Excel, perform any calculation on it, select it and apply formatting, etc., the trailing 0 shows up. Why on earth would they build in the functionality to store a 16 digit number, but then not let you display it or use it? If it walks like a bug and talks like a bug, it just might be a bug.

By: Dick Kusleika

Dick Kusleika — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:28:00 +0000

elkaba: Did you see where I typed the "If you type" and the "you get" parts? That means that I did try it and didn't work. But I'm not above error. I make errors all the time, so I'll try it again. Nope, it still doesn't work. I'll happily change my position, but I'll need more evidence.

By: elkaba

elkaba — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:42:00 +0000

dick you should try what blu is saying before you write something about he’s wrong because i have tried what he says and that’s the best answer for this problem that i have found it does write any number with that length and with about 15 characters more and ashley i dont think you r a genious