• format/number/Text (03 SP2 )

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    #439780

    I formatted a column of phone numbers Format/Cell/Number/Text.
    But when I then edited some of the numbers Excel changed them to dates.
    In the description of “Text” it says “The cell is displayed exactly as entered” Obviously this is not so.
    What is going on?

    Here is the task I am working on. I have a large number of phone numbers in a db. 99% start with “64”. Since all the users understand that I am trying to save width I am trying to delete all the “64”s with the replace command.

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    • #1051635

      Sometimes Excel tries to be too clever.
      You can work around it by replacing 64 with an apostrophe aka single quote '

    • #1051646

      You can also try

      Format/Cells/Special/Phone Number.

      This is available on the 2003 English version of Excel that I have installed.

      Regards,

      Tom Duthie

      • #1051655

        Thank you but I tried that and it had the same problem. I am trying to represent the the phone number as a 5 digit number in this format: “X-XXXX”.
        Hans solution worked fine. I am surprissed I didn’t think of it myself. It seems very obvious.

        • #1051803

          Marc:
          [indent]


          . . .5 digit number in this format: “X-XXXX”.


          [/indent]
          If your phone numbers are all like that, you can pre-format the column with a custom format of: 0-0000 (zeros, not capital O’s)

          If you enter less than 5 digits in the cell Excel will pad the start of the number with zeros

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    Reply To: format/number/Text (03 SP2 )

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