[Koha] Koha CSV Reports

[Robin Sheat]

Op 16/07/13 14:48, Fred King schreef:
>    Right click on the top of the column
>    Select "format cells"
>    Choose "number"
>    Change "decimal places" to 0.

Use text, don't use number. This is exactly what I'm talking about :)
Barcodes aren't numbers, they're strings of characters with no
particular semantics.

In particular, leading zeros and punctuation like '-' risk getting lost.
Barcodes can even have letters in them, like the example provided does.
I've also seen ISBNs turned into scientific notation because they were
too big to be regular numbers. That caused headaches.

My fundamental belief is that spreadsheets tend to cause data loss
unless you tread very carefully. This kind of thing is not what they're
designed for, nor are they good at it (though they _seem_ that way.)

When working on migrations, the only reason a spreadsheet will touch my
data is for browsing it, they are OK for getting rough summaries of
what's in there, but they always corrupt something. So I never let them
save anything.

It even can cause major economic downturns!
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/17/rogoff-reinhart-excel-errors/

-- 
Robin Sheat
Catalyst IT Ltd.
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