As chilledham points out it is Excel that is converting the number to a floating point format.

The way to avoid this (in Excel and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel) is to specify a cell format to ensure that the number is displayed in the way you want. You will also need to add some link style formatting to ensure it also looks like a link. Here is a working example:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;

my $workbook    = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new( 'example.xls' );
my $worksheet   = $workbook->add_worksheet();

my $link_format = $workbook->add_format(
    color      => 'blue',
    underline  => 1,
    num_format => 1,
);

$worksheet->set_column( 'B:B', 20 );

$worksheet->write_url( 'A1', 'www.perl.com', 270751343164, $link_forma
+t );
$worksheet->write_url( 'B1', 'www.perl.com', 270751343164, $link_forma
+t );

__END__
[download]

The set_column() method call is there to show how to display the number since it is now larger than the cell.

Thanks everyone. I've always been able to avoid Excel for a regular ol' CSV, so this was my first experience. I assumed it was WriteExcel because in the docs it mentioned that it will format things how it thinks they should be formatted, in addition to my inexperience with Excel.

Are you sure Spreadsheet::WriteExcel is the culprit? I imagine you see the formatted version of your number in the cell, but what do you see in the function bar when you click on the cell?

I pasted 270751343164 into an Excel sheet and through the magic of changing the cell's width saw the value change between: ###, 3E+11, 2.71E+11 and 2.70751E+11. The function bar always displayed the correct value, however.

Try the write_string method and see if your numbers look better.

uG:

Do you mean that the write_url() method isn't working for you? If not, what's wrong?

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.