Excel not processing numbers from other webpages as real numbers

[eugchen]

i copied these numbers from my credit card bill from chase.com. trying to sum up these transactions, but the negative values dont seem to add up. they appear as numbers though. how can i change this so i can get the correct sum?

[eugchen]

ok i figured out that for the negative numbers, the bank was using a "−" and not a "-". i replaced all them with Ctrl + H and its fine now.