This is more a tip than a question because I have been banging my head against a wall over this for a few days and finally discovered the answer.

I was trying to read a 3 to 6 digit number from an Excel file using the following code:

01 VOI-VEN-NUM PIC X(13).
INQUIRE EX-WORKSHEET @Range(cell-range)::Value in VOI-VEN-NUM

If the number in the cell was 123456 it would come in as 1.23456000000

I was able to fix it by changing "Value" to "Text" like this:

INQUIRE EX-WORKSHEET @Range(cell-range)::Text in VOI-VEN-NUM

Hope this saves someone else some aggravation.