How to have excel recognize zero as a string? - excel

I need to put data validation on a range of cells so that you can enter no more and no less than 9 characters in those cells. The problem is that SOMETIMES those 9 characters will be all number ... and that "number string" will start with a zero ... e.g. 012345678. Excel will remove the zero, as it recognizes that string as a number and my validation kicks in saying that I need to enter 9 characters into that field.
Any ideas?

Format the range of cells as Text. This will prevent Excel from trimming leading zeroes.

=TEXT(Cellwithnumber,"000000000")

Normally, if you format a range as text prior to typing in data (by right-clicking → format cells) or with something like
Dim c As Object
For Each c In Selection.Cells
c.NumberFormat = "#"
Next c
or
ActiveSheet.Cells.NumberFormat = "#"
Excel wont cut the leading zeroes.
If other users are using your sheet, you could protect the cell formats, so they don't accidentally change it back to numbers by, say, pasting data in with formats.

You could create a new cell and enter them as text formulas. Say the value you want to get the 0 from is in A1, enter your formula in a cell:
=TEXT(A1,"000000000")
That will show the leading 0.

If you want to use VBA:
rngTarget.NumberFormat = "#" ' rngTarget is a Range, can be e.g. ActiveCell or ActiveSheet.Cells(1, 2) or ActiveSheet.Range("B8")

Related

Find/Replace not finding cell value after formatting

There is a column of values that are moved from one Excel spreadsheet to another, in the same workbook, by a macro. The values should be five characters, only numbers, including leading zeros.
There are several ways that have successfully replaced the lost leading zeros from the auto formatting that Excel does. With a strange result.
For every cell that the macro has formatted the cells, the Find/Replace tool refuses to recognize any searches that include zeros.
Example:
Before Macro = 9093
After Macro = 09093
The Find/Replace window will find a search value of 9093 but will not find a search value of 09093. A Find/Replace window will find a positive hit after deleting the macro formatted 09093 and hand keying 09093 into the cell.
I have not tried code checking each value for the desired number of characters then concatenating leading zeros until the right number of characters has been reached. My hesitation stems from my assumption that a macro running this code will run very slow when having to go through 1000 or so rows.
Code blocks below are two attempts:
''Masks for a five character sequence.
' Corrects for leading zeros being dropped for Product Code column.
' Currently does not work.
Columns("F:F").Select
Selection.NumberFormat = "00000"
''Alternative method for keeping correct format of Product Code
' (with leading zeros) and searchable with Find window.
' Also not functioning.
Dim a
Dim l As Long
With Range("F2", "F" & lastUsedRow)
.NumberFormat = "#"
a = .Value
For l = 1 To UBound(a, 1)
a(l, 1) = Right("0000" & a(l, 1), 6)
Next l
.Value = a
End With
The actual value of the cell you are trying to find is 9093, even though it is shown as 09093 through formatting. The find/replace tool will look for a string value of 09093 while the actual value is 9093 and thus cannot find it. Presumably when you key in the 09093 it is formatted as text rather than a number to preserve the leading 0s.
If you don't actually use the numbers in the newly created column for analysis, might I suggest the line below. This way you can find the cell with the leading 0's from the Find/Replace dialog as the entire product number including the leading 0's are a string.
Selection.NumberFormat = "#" 'This formats the selected cell as text

How to add apostrophe in each cell in particular column in excel without loosing leading zeros

I have column in excel with dates of birth of employees (in format DDMMYYYY) and for some reason I was asked to add apostrophe before each and every record (in a way that it is not visible). There is a lot of records.
When I try to do It automatically it always removes leading zero.
For example from 01011900 I get 1011900.
I tried find & replace, concatenate,
Nothing from these answers helped:
Adding Appostrophe in every field in particular column for excel
Each cell has to be formatted as a text, not date.
Any ideas?
Try:
="'"&TEXT(A1,"00000000")
This will force a format of "00000000" which will allow leading zeros. In fact, if you use =TEXT() then you don't need the apostrophe to force the text value.
VBA version:
Sub MacroMan()
Dim rng As Excel.Range
Set rng = Application.InputBox("Select range to amend:", , , , , , , 8)
If Not rng Is Nothing Then
For Each cell In rng.Cells
cell.Value = "'" & Format(cell.Value, "00000000")
Next
End If
End Sub
A way around is simply by changing the last digit of the year (assuming the data is all of the same year, for example 2018 replace with 201, using find and replace menu. Or if the case is multiple years, we could replace the first 2 digits of the year with 3 digits which the last digit is a particular digit, say 0. Thus the year /1988 would become /19088 after replacement.
Second phase is by adding aposthrope to the top cell, and simply paste its format to other cells.
Last phase is replace the wrong year to its original data.
Hope could help.
Right click the column and Format the cell. Choose custom and type ddmmyyyy or mmyydddd. That should do the trick.

Excel: Formula to extract a string of text delimited by markers from cells

I'm messing with a spreadsheet containing postal addresses that have been inserted in the cells' comments
Each comment contain an address composed of a variable number of lines (damn UK addresses, they can have up to 7 lines!) in the following format:
Line1,
Line2,
Line3,
[...],
State
With my poor skills, I've managed to extract the comment with a VBA script, obtaining the following string on a single cell:
Line1,Line2,Line3,[...],State
At this point each string between commas must be extracted to its own cell.
I've managed to extract the 1st 3 lines with the following formulas:
For Line1:
=LEFT(A8;(SEARCH(",";A8))-1)
For Line2:
=MID(A8; SEARCH(",";A8)+1; SEARCH(","; A8; SEARCH(","; A8)+1)-SEARCH(",";A8)-1)
For Line3:
=MID(A8; SEARCH(",";A8;SEARCH(",";A8;SEARCH(",";A8;SEARCH(",";A8)))+1)+1;SEARCH(","; A8; SEARCH(","; A8;SEARCH(",";A8)+1)+1)-SEARCH(",";A8;SEARCH(",";A8)+1)-1)
From this point I start to get overflow errors from my brain... I probably need some days of sleep.
Can anybody help me to get to "line6", and finally suggest me how to pull out the "State line" which ends without comma?
I thought I could pull out the "State" line with =RIGHT(",";SEARCH(",";A8)-1) but I'm obviously doing something wrong because that pulls out a comma instead of a string.
I guess I could do everything with a VBA script, but I'm not that skilled yet :(
With comma separated data in A1, in B1 enter:
=TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE($A1,",",REPT(" ",999)),COLUMNS($A:A)*999-998,999))
and copy across. For example:
Note:
Why not use TextToColumns ?
The row of formulas re-calculates automatically if A1 changes.
The row of formulas will work even if A1, itself, contains a formula.
If you are wanting to do this programmatically instead of using a built-in, check out the split function for chopping up your comma separated string. It will split up your input string into an array. Then you can do whatever you like with the array.
Dim Names() As String
Names() = Split(inputValue, ",")
For i = 0 To UBound(Names)
' do what you want with each piece
Next
Gary's Student's answer is great for using the built-in functions.
If you want a VBA solution:
Sub spitString()
Dim sourceRange As Range
Dim stringArr() As String
Dim i As Integer
Set sourceRange = ActiveSheet.Range("A1")
stringArr = Split(sourceRange.Value, ",")
For i = LBound(stringArr) To UBound(stringArr)
sourceRange.Offset(0, i + 1).Value = stringArr(i)
Next i
End Sub
You could avoid adding comments: Are you aware that users can add line breaks inside a cell by pressing ALT+RETURN?
If having high rows d is a problem and you don't like that formatting, an alternative approach might be to write a simple bit of code that changes the height of the current row when a user clicks in a certain range. It would , make other rows less high. Perhaps.
Just a thought. It has benefits keeping it simple.
Harvey.

Excel formulas are not working - not recognizing numbers

I've pasted some numbers on Excel spreadsheet and wanted to do some calculations with it. The problem is that Excel isn't recognizing the numbers. I've already tried several methods to convert them into numbers and none of them works: paste/special multiplying by 1; formating each cell to the number/scientific number format. And there isn't also an error message on the top right corner of each cell like I've read on the internet indicating that there is a number written as text. If I retype each number, Excel recognizes it.
To make sure that the problem was really that the numbers were understood by Excel as text, I tried the functions ISNUMBER(), that returned FALSE and ISTEXT() that returned true.
I want to know how I can fix that problem without having to type into each cell.
Ps. the numbers are in scientific number format, i.e., 1,085859E+001 
Since the column is text the cells are formatted as text.
you use Value to convert the text into a number so the formula will work
A2 = 123
A3 = 123 Richard
Formula
=isnumber(A2) result is false
use
=isnumber(value(A2)) result is True
I was having the same problem, until I realized that the decimal separator was set as (,) instead of (.) in the default settings. Once I changed that, everything worked fine.
If your "numbers" are being detected as text, you can use VALUE() to make sure Excel understands that it is actually a number.
A1: `1.23E+10 (this is a string)
B1: =VALUE(A1)
=12300000000
C1: 1.23E+10 (this is a number)
D1: =IF(B1==C1,"It worked", "Uh Oh")
=It Worked (for me anyway)
I'm not sure what the comma in your scientific number will do so might want to have the function replace them if there not required.
See Kenneth Hobs' answer here: http://www.vbaexpress.com/forum/showthread.php?42119-Solved-Convert-exponential-format-to-a-number
Open your Excel File, Press Alt + f11 to open the VBA screen,
Go to Insert > Module, Copy and Paste Kenneth's code:
Sub Expo()
Dim cell As Range, s() As String, lng As Long, n As Integer
For Each cell In Selection
With cell
If Not VarType(.Value2) = vbString Then GoTo NextCell
s() = Split(cell.Value2, "E")
.Value2 = s(0) * 1 * (1 * 10 ^ s(1)) 'ePart(s(1))
.NumberFormat = "General"
.EntireColumn.AutoFit
End With
NextCell:
Next cell
End Sub
You can now run it as a macro to convert selected cells. Or if you want it as a function copy this code instead:
Function Expo(cell As Range)
Dim s() As String
With cell
If VarType(.Value2) = vbString Then
s() = Split(.Value2, "E")
Expo = s(0) * 1 * (1 * 10 ^ s(1)) 'ePart(s(1))
End If
End With
End Function
This way you can use it as a normal function in excel eg =Expo(A1)
As I mentioned in the comments above though, you will have already lost some degree of accuracy when the original number was converted to scientific notation. The best solution is to get the originating program to write the proper numbers into the text file if you can.
Open a new word document and try Pasting the web content in word first, the copy this content from the word document and paste special in excel, as text. This simple solution worked for me
Open a new blank Excel, then go to Data > From Text, this way you can import text and designate which format you want to convert to. On the Text Import Wizard page, select either Delimited or Fixed width (I am not sure how your original text file look like but generally it should be Delimited. On the next page, pick a Delimiter or enter one in Others. On step 3, you should see the data listed below and the data format on the upper left. Pick General for those columns that you believe should not be Text. This should fix your problem.
My case was stubborn, no response to Paste Special or CLEAN(). Finally resolved by copying the offending column of Excel data and pasting into new Notepad++ doc. This revealed a leading "?" in all the bad numbers (apparently some non-printing character). Used Search > Replace to find all "?" and replace with nothing. Edit > Select All, copy to a new Excel column, and voilà!
There may be hidden characters. Trailing/leading spaces may not visible and hence erroneously be neglected. If there is trailing/leading Space characters with numeric values, excel consider it as text.
Copy contents problematic cells to MS-Word [(Select problematic cells and copy them to MS-Word)] and check any hidden characters, Remove hidden characters with "find"/"replace" functionality.
I was having issues with numbers from PPT (e.g. ($3,000))pasted to excel. Tried multiple different ways to get the text to recognize including find replacing parens, commas, $ signs to blank and trying to format so excel could run formulas. The only option that worked was to paste to Word first then paste value to excel which worked without any additional formatting steps. Surprised I could not do it all within excel though. Maybe there's another way
Select all the cells to convert to a number.
|Data| Menu Tab > Data Tools > [Text to columns]
Delimited. [Next]
Deselect all "Delimiters". [Next]
"Column data format" > General
[Finish]
Verify by using =ISNUMBER(C16) in an spare cell, where C16 is a sample cell. Should now return TRUE.
This happened to me lately. I had forgotten that I had set formula recalculation to manual. The weird thing is that it was returing FALSE when initially created (which was correct) but given the test depended on the value of other cells that, when changed, did not trigger the change in the cell with the isnumber() formula.
Pressing F9 "fixed" my problem (and my ignorance).

How can I have Excel display trailing zeros when using VBA?

I have an input field where the user inputs a number "X.XXXXX"
I then copy that number using some VBA to another sheet when a button is pressed. The problem occurs when the number ends in 0 or multiple zeros. For example, take the number 5.46770. I have the cell formatted to display 5 decimal places. However, if the trailing number is a 0, Excel still considers the value to be 5.4677 unbeknownst to the user. So when my macro pull the value from the cell it takes 5.4677 vs. 5.46770. What I'm trying to figure out is how to have my VBA code pull the trailing 0(s). Any ideas?
The value of 5.4677 is the same as 5.46770; they are equal.
If you are trying to get a string that is formatted just like the cell, try:
cell.Text
Depending on what you are doing with the NUMBER, you could set the cell value with a single quote in front. It will force it to be shown like text, leading/trailing zeros or not. IE:
CELL2.VALUE = "'" & FORMATNUMBER(CELL1.VALUE,5)

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