Help please, cell formatting only works after I double click the cell

[Mycotopian]

I have a worksheet with about 28000 records that I pulled from MS Access. The phone number column is left justified and has a little green arrow indicating there is an error of some type. The error balloon says " the number in this cell is formatted as text or is preceeded by an apostophe". I try to set the formatting as Special-Phone Number but nothing happens. However if I double click on the cell and then click an ajoining cell the formatting works. How can I fix the entire column without having to double click on 28000 cells?

[lk]

Format as phone number, use Data>Text to Column to convert from Text to a
Number.

"Mycotopian" wrote:

>
> I have a worksheet with about 28000 records that I pulled from MS
> Access. The phone number column is left justified and has a little
> green arrow indicating there is an error of some type. The error
> balloon says " the number in this cell is formatted as text or is
> preceeded by an apostophe". I try to set the formatting as
> Special-Phone Number but nothing happens. However if I double click on
> the cell and then click an ajoining cell the formatting works. How can
> I fix the entire column without having to double click on 28000 cells?
>
>
> --
> Mycotopian
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>

[Shorrocks]

Thanks - found this thread and had the same problem but Excel was not recognizing the error. Using "Text to Column" worked beautifully.

[Rompetelo]

Hi I have the same problem and when I use text to columns it works.
However, when I record text to columns with a macro and then I use it, it does not work.
Could anyone help me with this problem?