Freescan entering RID's

This may actually be an Excel question rather than Freescan but I am not sure. I want to enter a large number of RID's with alphatags into Freescan to go on my 396XT. Over on my source data the RID's are all in plain digits... for example I might have RID 2719 and an alphatag to go with it such as Corrections 43..... but Freescan and I guess the scanner needs the RID to have a lower case i in front, i.e. i2719. It is fine and dandy to add the i one at a time for a few RID's when putting into Freescan.. but is there some way to take the whole list and in one batch type move add that i to my whole list of RID's either back on Excel or inside Freescan??

I did something like that by making a column of i's beside the number column in excel then copy paste it to wordpad and back to excel... I dont remember if i had to copy replace anything in wordpad before copying back to excel ??

I just tried it... worked fine without messing with replacing anything in wordpad...

You can also use this method. Assuming you have a column of i's and a column of IDs in columns A and B respectively:

Fill column C1 with this formula:
=CONCATENATE(A1,B1)

Copy that cell down in column C for each A/B set. That will show the end result.

Now, to GET the end result, copy column C and paste it into column D using the following: PASTE SPECIAL and select VALUES ONLY.

Column D will then contain your IDs prepended with the "i".

just type ="i"&(Cell reference) in another column.
If Cell A1 contains the first ID use ="i"&A1
Drag that down the column

I tried that. You still end up with a formula you have to copy-n-paste special as I mentioned before you can copy the value..

Thanks for the replies. Without me trying all of the suggestions I won't know if they all work. I did randomly go with Voyagers cocatenate one and it worked fine.... so thanks again, and now I am off to look up the word concatenate!

You don't end up with a formula, you end up with i2320 or whatever the number... and works perfectly in the spreadsheet I've used to hold IDs to transfer to freescan for years

I just started working on some actual RID numbers and it seems to me that once I put the formula in Column C and then fill down, the resulting RID numbers with the i in front appear and I don't have to do any more, in other words I don't have to take the next step and copy to Column D. That's how it seems so far.

They will show in the cell, but when you copy that cell you will still have the formula. That's why the COPY/Paste Special is needed.
What you are doing is pasting the results to a new cell so you can copy the results into the programs.

But, if your Excel copies the results from Column C, just use that.

At least that's the case in my Excel. I've copied to FreeScan and Sentinel and needed to do that in both cases otherwise I get the formula.

If you are using EZ Grab, it doesn't recognize Excel formulas anyway, only values.

Forgot about FreeScan not using the Windows Clipboard. Well, that makes it easier then.