special character

That is very dependent on the font, codepage and encoding. In standard ASCII the colon (:) follows the numbers

http://ascii-table.com/

In unicode it would be (based on the 4035 number) a TIBETAN CANTILLATION SIGN SBUB -CHAL (if Decimal) or maybe chinese

http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/tibetan.html

B.T.W. where do you use or find this character?

I get this when getting info from database into excel.

its not supposed to be there. (only numbers are allowed)- so wondering why this spooky character is in..

What database are you trying to access, and by what means? Do you have an export of the database?

probably is the tab char, that you can see if you take the excel file and open it in notepad, for instance.

it is from SQL Server to Access. yes, it is an extract. please see attached in excel.
specChar.xls

it is happening to only one column, and that too, only some rows. In the database, they all look the same, and are integers.

Looks like you are getting a x'0B' at the end, which is a vertical tab, odd to see that show up.  How are you exporting the data from SQL Server?  Is the field value in SQL Server actually the number part, without the special character?

00000000: 35 32 35 37 37 35 34 31 - 33 35 0b 0d 0a 0d 0a 0a   52577541 35......

~bp

Also, what is the datatype from the table definition for that field in SQL Server?

~bp

bp, the datatype is bigint. yes, it is supposed to hold only real number. (no decimals)

Interesting.  I wouldn't think it would be possible to "stuff" a funny charater into a bigint field, that should only hold a number.

Is there any pattern to how these show up in the exported file?  Like are they on a group of consecutive records, or are they always seperated by some number of good records, etc?  

What tool or process are you using to create the export file?

As a test you might try doing an export without this field, and see if the funny charaters go away, or if they show up in some other field.  That might give us a clue if this is a data or formatting problem of that one field, or something the general export process is introducing that just happened to fall in that field.

Sorry this isn't more helpful / specific, just trying to think of things that might help you track down the issue.

~bp

bp, it is a mystery. will watch out for it.

how did you figure out it is the vertical tab?

Thanks bp for that education.

do you recommend the HxD or the Hex Editor Neo/

While Neo looks a bit more robust and powerful, it also might bring more to the party than you need for simple stuff.  Based on that I'd suggest you start with HxD and see how it works for you, I think the simpler interface and approach might be the right choice.

~bp

thanks a lot for your guidance, bp.