Why the same ASCII code shows different symbols in Excel?
It's crazy.
I paste the ∞ symbol in Excel in A1 and I put the formula =code(A1) in B2.
It shows 63.
After I digit =char(63) in A2, it shows ? symbol.
When I test =(A1=A2) it's false
If I copy formula and paste value for A2, it continue to be false.
Why? How is it possible the same ASCII code shows two different symbols?
My version is Excel 2003 and Excel 2010.
I have noticed the same thing when trying to identify troublesome characters in workbooks uploaded here. CODE() identifies the character as one thing and CHAR() gives a different character for that code. It must have something to do with character sets.
<---------If you like someone's answer, click the star to the left of one of their posts to give them a reputation point for that answer.Ron W
CODE gives the numeric code for ASCII characters. However, ∞ is not an ASCII character. If you do Symbol, Insert, you will see in the Symbol window that this symbol is represented by Unicode code x221E. It is not in the ASCII character set. The decimal code is actually 8734. I am not sure of the arithmetic that causes CODE to return 63 (I thought it might be modulo 256 but that's not the case), but it gives a false result for characters with codes above 255.
Jeff
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Read the rules
Use code tags to [code]enclose your code![/code]
I've make some addition research.
When you copy and paste a symbol like ∞, the Excel writes ∞ (unicode)
∞ is a unicode 8734 (EE12), as the previous user told us
and there's no special reason why code(∞) is 63, like "?" symbol, but it's a
fake value.
If you writein a cell using VBA, the cell shows ∞
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if you writein a cell with ∞, the function return 8734Please Login or Register to view this content.
So you can use AscW in order to find if the character is unicode or not.
If it returns a number less than 256 it is not, otherwise it is.
To emphasize something that Paulo Buchsbaum wrote, AscW and ChrW are not worksheet functions, they are VBA functions. If you want to use this functionality in a worksheet you can write UDFs:
I gave the UDFs names that are different than the VBA names to avoid name collision. You can use any name you want.Please Login or Register to view this content.
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