The magic missing columns

When I first griped about importing addresses into Goldmine, I had a problem with zip-codes losing the leading zero for New England. Russ was kind enough to suggest saving as a DBF file, which is effective. I've since learned a couple things through instruction and hard knocks about using DBF files.

1. Only visible characters in the spreadsheet are saved. It was suggested to use Courier font and then adjust all the column sizes to fit all text.
2. Numbers should be formatted as such (not 'general') to avoid truncating decimals.

And the one that got me today is more subtle. When exporting, I was losing about half my Excel columns. Turns out that because I had done a quick test with just a few columns, Excel had defined that as my 'database' despite my adding columns. Here is a better explanation:

"This is because, when you first exported the Excel file to a .dbf file, Excel created a "named range" for that .dbf file. If you do not modify this named range, Excel will continue using this original range and, thus, not include any added rows or columns on subsequent exports to .dbf of the same file." --Tips about uploading a dbf file

Keeping a theme going this week: I'm mastering my &@#$% tools!