Paste Values Button/Setting

[slide]

Is there anyway to make a Paste Values button or make CTRL-V paste only values? I HATE how it always thinks every cell is the same looking! Having to go to the menu drop down every time I paste any info is really getting annoying.

[ChemistB]

If you go to View > Toolbars>Customize and Go to the commands tab>Edit and you can drag the icon for paste values (looks like a clipboard with a 12 on it) to your toolbar. That should then always appear on your toolbar when you open a new workbook. Let us know if this worked. You could also put a macro into your personal macro book and assign a shortcut to it. Let me know if that's what you would prefer.

ChemistB

[Muncher]

I have an problem with pasting values as well, but a bit different....

often when i copy paste data from a website, the numbers dont seem to be recognized as numbers. so when i dump may data in the sheet and ask to SUM a column i get a result of zero, even though there are numbers in the cells. to get around this i have to click on each cell individually and simply hit enter and then it recognizes the numbers. i can visually see which cells are numbers and which are still just text (text numbers) because the number shifts from the left side of the cell to the right side,
example

data before clicking cell and hitting enter [6.37_____] -cannot SUM
data after clicking cell and hitting enter [_____6.37] -can SUM

ive tried copying the column and pasting the values, tried formating cells (before and after) as number or currency but nothing i do (other than clicking each cell individually and hitting enter) will get these number to be considered numbers.

hope that made sense and thanks in advace to everyone who spent the time to read this post, hopefully someone has an answer, seems like it should be a simple fix....

[ChemistB]

It is a pain in the neck but there are a number of ways to fix it. Because you can click on the cell, enter and then it recognizes it as a number, that means it's not seeing them as text because of blanks before or after the number (that's good).

Option 1
If you only have a few columns of numbers you want to convert, highlight a column, go to Data>Text to Columns, then just click on the finished button. This sets the cells to General Format and initializes them.

Option 2
In a blank cell, type 1, enter. Copy this cell and then highlight your entire range and Paste Special> Multiply. This multiplies all your cells by 1 which forces Excel to recognize them as numbers. (Some people prefer using 0 and Add but same difference )

Did that work?

ChemistB

[slide]

Chemist: Yes that worked! Thanks. I'm also trying to create a macro to do this with a keyboard shortcut i've posted a question about that in the Programming Section ( http://www.excelforum.com/showthread.php?t=640122 )