_ImportErrors table generated because Excel value too long

[NeoPa]

Nice response Jeremy.

I must admit that I'd rather discounted this problem from earlier info, but it seems that was premature. Excel, as a means of transferring data, does have a number of complications associated that make it a pretty limited choice. This is one of them. It tries to be too clever. If the first number of rows indicate that a column may be treated as numeric (or other specific data type) then it will treat that column that way and fall over any data that doesn't match it's self-determined pattern.

That all said, you seem to have extracted a win from a pretty hopeless situation so I'm really quite impressed. Posting an explanation for travellers that follow in your footsteps is a definite bonus.

[JeremyI]

Much appreciated, NeoPa. Yes, too-cleverness is something we'll always have to suffer with in MS Office, I expect.

For this project, since there are going to be various sorts of users contributing and using data (with wide differences in expertise levels and sometimes no involvement at all with the database itself), it seemed best to provide the common denominator of 'type the answers into the spreadsheet' when it was going out into the field. I didn't expect the import to be easy, but also didn't expect quite so many goofy problems...

Definitely glad that bit is over!