Exports, I can help, The only way I know to make EXCEL treat a numeric as a string is to MANUALLY import it. Open excel, then open the data file, then, after you've set up where the columns start and stop I use a tab in Powerhouse and the | symbol as my delimiter. See commented code below If you have Powerhouse. DEFINE D-09 INT*2 = 9 DEFINE HTAB CHAR*1 heading "|^|" = CHAR(D-09)[2:1] ;gives a tab in the report line and a "|" in the heading DEFINE HTAB3 CHAR*1 heading "|^|^|" = CHAR(D-09)[2:1] ; I use the various 2-4 settings so my column headings line up DEFINE HTAB4 CHAR*1 heading "|^|^|^|" = CHAR(D-09)[2:1] ; if my column headings are 2, 3 , or 4 lines max This lets me keep the column headings lined up with the right column. I then SET PAGE WIDTH 255 (or whatever up to that) And SET PAGE LENGTH 0 When I import, it looks like an excel file. A little tweaking and you should be able to do this in COBOL. -----Original Message----- From: Tracy Pierce [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2004 2:48 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [HP3000-L] unpacking comma-delimited data? I need to unpack some typical comma-delimited data. I've written this in Cobol before, but can't find it grrr. Does anyone have a code snippet I can copy? Lazy, yes, but worth a shot! (data's similar to : "tracy",4159232266,"is lazy",-1.2345,"etc". Also due to laziness, Cobol's the only compiler I have on my 3000s.) Or there may be some long-overlooked Suprtool feature for this - output,link works great, STExport is great too, but I haven't noticed STImport or similar. ? btw while I'm on this topic, does anyone know how to force Excel to treat "12345" as a string? It annoyingly right-justifies these despite the quotes; mixed with "A12345" entries, it looks sloppy and is misleading. Thanks in advance! K Tracy Pierce Systems Programmer Golden Gate Bridge, Hwy & Transp District P.O. Box 9000 Presidio Station San Francisco CA 94129-0601 * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html * * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *