PleaseMy orginal Post dissapeared

Hello,
I am new to CR and have a very interesting problem for my self. I am generating a report from Excel. Works very well except for one thing. The data consist of part numbers and there availability. here is an example of some of the part numbers "123456", "S8935" and "319525-11" The report display all of the part numbers that are "123456" but any part number with a letter or dash in it displays as a NULL value (blank) and does not group them either. Any help you could provide on this would be wonderful. Again keep in mind I am new to CR so I might need a little hand holding in your descriptions.

Thanks in advance
RobertIt sounds like you have the field setup as a number instead of as a string.|||Sorry...but how do I change that property of that field?|||How are you getting the data from Excel to the report?|||I am using Cyrstal Reports. I use the wizard to designate which fields I want to display and filter and group. It works fine except it will not group or display the actual part numbers that have the above mentioned criteria. It does have the associated data displayed with the blank or un grouped part numbers. Changing the field to a string makes total sense but I can not find a way to change the field properties to a string from a number.

thanks
For the reply

Robert|||is there someone that can help me? Maybe I can send the report to you with the excel file.

Please

Thanks Robert|||I tried to play around with Excel and Crystal and I could get all the Excel fields to display if they were all one type or the other (either all numbers or all strings). When I mixed them ( a few number and a few strings), it would only display the type that was at the top of the list. Maybe there's some way you can make all your data appear to Crystal as a string? Maybe it's a bug in Crystal Reports. Have you tried searching their website? Or searching www.google.com or another search engine?

Crystal's Website:
http://support.businessobjects.com/search/advsearch.asp

I'm sorry I'm not much help. Will you post the answer when you find it?|||I sure will post the answer when I find it. I do not want anyone to go through the same thing. I also noticed the same thing. If I sort differently it will change the format of the field to the first entry or first few to a string or number. I also noticed in the index the pane next to the preview window everything was decimaled. I was able to fix that but not get all the data. This is a huge bummer and I am not sure why this does this.

Thanks for your help

Robert