I have a cell which is formatted as Text field with wrap text on. The values are shown as "#" when I move away from the cell, how do I prevent it?
Try to expand the column size (width). If this doesn't help try to format the cell as General instead of Text.
When this happens to me I just have to expand the column size so that the content fits perfectly within the cell.
More about it here:
Excel - #### sign in cell formatted "Wrap Text"
Related
excel is turning 8656:2 into 360.668055555556. I have the formatter set to Text.
Format the cell as Text before you place the value in it, because when you enter 8656:2 Excel is considering it as a time value - which has an equivalent numerical value of 360.668055555556.
Otherwise, enter the value with a leading apostrophe '8656:2 to identify it as a text value.
I am looking to remove the ' before the content of a cell in order to do a VLookup, whowever when there are no letters it is turning the value into a number and the vlookup is retrieving inaccurate values. Any idea?
pre - '02364W105
post - 02364W105
pre - '151290889
post - 151290889 (this becomes 1.51E+08)
Change the cell format to Numbers and it does change the style. Normally it should work without it though.
You ha ve to select all these cells and change format to Number.
Probably they will still include the " ' " until you edit each one from the formula bar or pressing F2 and then ENTER.
The best way to avoid editing one by one is to write "1" into an empy cell, then copy it, then select all the cells you want to convert to number, then paste special, select "values" and "multiply".
This will convert all you cells with number formatted as text into numeric cells with numbers inside.
I have a single cell with the value:
426,427,433,439,442
This isn't a number, rather a list of numbers. If I try to add another number to the list, for example, 679. Excel changes the cell to read:
679,426,427,433,439,000
If I select the cell and format it as "text", it changes to:
4.26427E+14
I've tried various cell formatting options, but I can't seem to get Excel to treat these numbers like text.
Copy and paste the column into Notepad, format a new column in Excel as text. In Notepad select all, copy it back out from Notepad into the column in Excel that you formatted for text.
First place a single quote (apostrophe) in front of the set of numbers and add the latest value at the end appropriate position.
add (apostrophe) in front of numbers
add (comma's) between
add any number by adding a (comma)
Possibly:
=LEFT(A1,3)&","&MID(A1,4,3)&","&MID(A1,7,3)&","&MID(A1,10,3)&","&MID(A1,13,3)
It seems you have a number 426427433439442 with the commas purely a presentational aspect of the formatting. I take it you want the commas and the only way now may be to insert them.
I have a large column of data in Excel. This data should all be treated as text, but in some cells Excel is "magically" changing the data to numeric. This is screwing up my vlookpup() functions in another part of the spreadsheet, and I need to override Excel's automatic data type detection.
If I manually go through the cells, and append ' to each numeric cell, it works. I just don't want to do this by hand for several thousand cells.
For example, this works:
Manually type '209
And this does not work:
Manually type 209, right click and format as text.
If changing the format of the column is not an option, it's helpful sometimes to create another column that's 'vlookup friendly' and leave your main column alone.
This is a trick I've used a few times:
Say your 'mixed' column is column A.
In column B, enter the formula:
=CONCATENATE(A1)
or as Jean-François pointed out in a comment, the shorter version:
=A1 & ""
And drag it down for to the bottom row.
Column B will be all strings. The VLookup can then use column B.
Under the Data Tab, open the Text to Columns wizard and set the Column data format to Text. The destination cell can be set to the original data cell, but it will replace the original formatting with text formatting. Other aspects of formatting e.g. Bold, color, font, etc. are not changed using this method.
Setting the cells to "Text" format, as Jean mentioned, should work. The easiest way to do this, in any version of Excel, is:
Right-click cell, "Format Cells", "Number" tab, select "Text" format.
Have you tried setting the cells' number format to "Text"?
In Excel 2003: Format > Cells... > Number > Category: Text.
I don't have the more recent Excel versions, but it has to be something similar.
I tried all the above but didn't work. And then added an apostrophe before the number. Only then it changed to text from the exponential notation.
If you already have your data and manually adding a quote in front of your data in each cell is not an option you can use a helper column and write
="'"&A1
in B1, where A1 is the reference to your cell, and drag down the formula in B1 to the bottom. At this point you will see the quote, and you need to paste data in column B as values (CTRL+C & ALT+E+S and select values, or paste special as values from the top menu). Then find+replace a '(quote) with a '(quote) and you will have a column with values forced to text and a quote in front of each numeral representation of the number.
Updated for Office 365 / Excel 365:
CONCATENATE is being deprecated and replaced by CONCAT.
This method still works, i.e. I need 7E10 to appear as 7E10 and not 7.00E+10
Microsoft documentation source here.
I have formatted the columns as follows:
_($* #,##0.00_);_($* (#,##0.00);_($* "-"??);(#_).
If I copy paste the value then it doesn't work.
But if I type 1234, then it automatically converts to $ 1,234.
But how can I make it work even I do pasting.
I googled it and found that conditional formatting is used in these scenario.(Am I right?)
I tried doing conditional formatting also but could not secceed.
Can somebody tell me how to achieve this in conditional formatting:
How to convert text so that final value will be like $ 1,234 ?
If the column is empty or white space , replace it with - in the center.
Any type of help is appreciated.
Thanks.
When you paste something into a cell in Excel, by default, the format is also pasted. To prevent this, you must do a Paste Special, then choose to only paste the Value.
For the conditional formatting of the currency, you can set up a rule that looks like this:
Getting a '-' to appear in a blank cell is not possible in Excel formatting rules. A dash can be inserted as formatting, but only as long as there is actual data in the cell. If the cell is blank, Excel will not display any characters.
If what appear to be numbers are imported as text there is likely to be a warning of this in Excel (a small green triangle in the top left of the cells - for all recent Excel versions can be turn on/off in Options, Formulas, Error Checking). By selecting a range that includes the first instance, these strings can be converted to General format (so that values are recognised as numbers) by clicking the warning icon and Convert to Number.
Then 'standard formatting' can be applied, perhaps:
` $* #,##0 ;($* #,##0)`
and empty cells selected with HOME > Editing - Find & Select, Go To Special..., Blanks then formatted Alignment Center and contents entered with Find (nothing) and filled with hyphens with Replace with -.