How can I turn off the function trigger for values led by a hyphen?

I have a report that exports data to a .csv format, which is opened using excel. For some of the values led by a hyphen, the error #NAME? populates. For others, the value led by a hyphen sticks, with no error. I need to turn off the trigger globally, so that my values led by a hyphen do not present the #NAME? error. I have tried changing to text format, I know that enclosing in " " or adding a space before the value allows it to stick - but I need a faster glocal change since there are many affected rows on this report.

Any guidance would be much appreciated!!

Thank you,

Heather

Hi!

If you enter -abc you will get a #NAME reaction.
If you enter -123 you will get -123 : simply a negative number.

If you format the cell beforehand as text, -abc will behave as text and not throw an error. -123 will also be accepted, but will be text, not negative number.

I guess there should be mileage therefore in formatting all the cells as text before importing.

Alf

Thank you. Unfortunately, the application (Remedy) that I am generating the report from produces the file each time the export is run. The report formatting doesn't go down to the level where I can preformat the spreadsheet. I appreciate the advice. It is valuable!