How to display text exactly as typed

**gugon** · 07-09-2009, 09:37 AM

There is probably a simple solution for this - I'm just not finding it.

Occasionally, I want a cell to display text EXACTLY as I type it.

For example, I want to type the abbreviation CNA into a cell.

Excel (2007) wants to AutoCorrect it to read "CAN".

The single apostrophe doesn't work for text.

Now, I can remove that particular AutoCorrect from its list of words, but I don't want to because normally, I would still want it to replace "cna" with "can".

I'd appreciate any help.

**sweep** · 07-09-2009, 10:10 AM

This isn't elegant, but....

Type CNA, f2, cursor left, ENTER

**deadlyduck** · 07-09-2009, 10:10 AM

You could add the text !cna to your custom auto-correct list and get Excel to replace it with cna (use capitals if required for the replacement text). Then each time you want cna to be typed, you'd actually type !cna.

It might be a bit tedious if you have a lot of these types of abbreviations.

**zbor** · 07-09-2009, 10:12 AM

If you put mouse pointer over corrected text you'll get option like: Change back to [previous]

Or you can choose stop autocorrecting.

**gugon** · 07-09-2009, 10:38 AM

Thank you for the suggestions!

I will make a note of the F2, cursor left idea.

Since this is an infrequent issue, I don't want to make any changes / additions in the Autocorrect. And I didn't see any options to change back when I put the mouse over the corrected text.

Thanks again