Cannot Format Cells

Summary: There are some known problems importing a file from Access 2002 into Excel 2000 and Excel 97 that will not allow a user to format cells the imported data is placed in. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003.)

If you work with data that you download into Excel from a database file, you may notice that you cannot seem to format the cells into which the data is placed. This apparently is a problem that occurs when you import an XLS file created by Access 2002 into Excel 2000 or Excel 97. Information about the problem is found in the Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=818082

There are a couple of workarounds mentioned in the article, but no fixes. The problem also doesn't seem to crop up if you create the file in Access 2002 and then load it into Excel 2002 or even Excel 2003.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2596) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003

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Cannot Format Cells