I just rememberd some of the data in the column is String and some is numerical.

for example "34-234234-2342-23432" and "2232442"

i have complete the project now so there is no rush. but this does seem to be an ongoing problem for older version of office (i think all the new versions are xml based).

so it would be great if we could come up with a solution to this. i would be more than happy to post the solution around to other forums, becuase when i was trying to find a solution i must have seen 100 plus forums and websites with developers having the same problem and no answers