🚀 go-pugleaf

Improv seems to handle certain string imports in a manner that causes  
problems (illustration follows.) Has anyone figured out a water-tight  
way around this. As a 1-2-3 and Symphony owner, I consider this pretty  
much a bug in Improv, although I'm sure that the folks at Lotus  
consider it a "feature."

Here's the problem: lets say that I have a database of names and  
addresses. Some of the zip codes begin with 0. In the database, this  
field is treated as a string rather than a number. However, when this  
string is imported into Improv, it _cleverly_ assumes that it knows  
more about the data than I do and unilaterally decides that, quoted or  
not, it is REALLY a number. Improv then places it in the model with the  
leading zero/s supressed. For example, here are various attempts at  
persuading Improv to accept (and maintain) the string 00123:

Import File representation		Improv representation
00123					123
"00123					123
'00123					'00123
"'00123					'00123
"00123"					123
'"00123					'"00123

The next-to-last example is the real killer. This works differently  
than any product I've ever used - normally characters enclosed in  
quotes means "treat this as a string."

It gets worse. I can manually type the characters " 0 0 1 2 3 into an  
Improv cell and get it to treat it temporarily as a string. When I save  
this as an .imx file to see how it is formatted - guess what? Lotus  
even formats it as "00123"!!! But if that .imx file is reopened, it  
reverts to the number 123, per example 5 above.

A few comments: please don't respond saying 'I have no trouble typing  
in "00123 and having it format as 00123. As I pointed out above, I know  
I can do it manually - that isn't the point. Part of the problem is the  
inconsistency between what you can do manually versus the way imported  
text is treated. 

I'm trying to solve the problem of being able to accurately import data  
from other applications and use the imported field in such a way that  
the difference between a number and a string is very important.

Of course, if anyone from Lotus would care to comment on why this  
feature exists and what it does for me, that would be a real bonus. :-)

Any ideas?

John Bartley
john@wpa.com