Hi:
My tendency would be to translate the '=' to something like ~ (tilde) or - (dash) or use ods escapechar to insert a unicode symbol into the text string....if the = wasn't required. or, put some text string in front of the whole field like
COMMENT: = or
NOTE: = or
X = or even
| =
I don't know whether inserting an "unprintable" character would work, but that might be something else to try -- on the other hand, Excel might just ignore the unprintable character.
Does the equal sign serve any meaningful purpose??? If forcing the field to be text doesn't work and you really, really need the = to be maintained, then you might really need to work with Tech Support on this question.
Excel has its own way of dealing with cell values and I'm not sure how you get around this one. To send a question to Tech Support, go to
http://support.sas.com/ and in the left-hand navigation pane, click on the link entitled "Submit a Problem". Alternately, you can go directly to the Tech Support Problem Form here:
http://support.sas.com/ctx/supportform/createForm
cynthia