If I want to display a number in yen currency, I can easily create a
custom format and type in "(alt-0165-release-alt)#,##0" for example.
This gets me the symbol I want and the cell still treated as a number.

But, how can I duplicate this same formatting when delivering HTML to
Excel through a web query, for example?

Creating a simple sheet, saving to html, then simplifying gets me this
result which works as I would like it to:

<head>
<style>
..excelYen {
mso-style-parent:style0;
mso-number-format:"\\=A5\#\,\#\#0\.00";
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table><tr><td class=3D"excelYen" align=3Dright>=A5123.46</td></tr></table>
</body>
</html>

However, I have 2 questions:

1) Why the need for back-slashes in the mso-number-format? What is the
requirement of this string value and when are backslashes needed?

2) How can I deliver the same content but use ¥ as the yen symbol
instead of the actual embedded unicode character?

Any hints or pointers in the right direction would be greatly
appreciated!

Matt Kruse