Hi Alan,

There are several ways.

1) One of the best is to prefix each value in Excel with an apostrophe,
e.g. '987654 instead of 987654. This forces Excel to treat the numbers
as text, but the apostrophes don't show up on the worksheet  or get
imported into Access. Here are a couple of VBA procedures that will add
apostrophes to every value in a column, or remove them from the selected
cells.

Sub AddApostrophesAllToColumn( _
     ByVal TheColumn As Long _
 )
 Dim C As Excel.Range
 With ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet
   For Each C In Intersect(.Columns(TheColumn), _
       .UsedRange).SpecialCells(xlCellTypeConstants).Cells
     C.Formula = "'" & C.Formula
   Next
 End With
End Sub

Sub RemoveApostrophes()
 Dim C As Excel.Range
 For Each C In Application.Selection.Cells
   C.Formula = C.Formula
 Next
End Sub

2) Sometimes it's enough to ensure that the first value in the column in
question cannot be interpreted as a number. E.g. if the first value is
123456A. Or try creating the table in Access first, with the field types
you need, before importing.

3) For the deep and dirty, see
http://www.dicks-blog.com/excel/2004/06/external_data_m.html
and http://support.microsoft.com/?id=257819

--
John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

Please respond in the newgroup and not by email.

Load it into an existing table with the data types specified the way you want
them.