Formatting data in cells

**mbhardwaj** · 09-14-2010, 05:40 PM

HI,

I have an excel sheet with some 2600 cells in one column only. The data is numeric, however I need it to show up as '434334434' , so I need to add open quote and closing quote to each cell. How can this be done? I am a new user and not very familiar with excel 2007. Any help or ideas much apprecited.

Thanks.

**contaminated** · 09-14-2010, 05:45 PM

Highlight that column, right click and select Format cells or press Ctrl+F1. In Number tab select Custom and type this into Type filed

'0'

Worked for me

**mbhardwaj** · 09-14-2010, 06:10 PM

Sorry this did not work for me at all. I type '0' in the Type field after going into the Format menu and nothing happens. I highlighted the full column that contains the data and it did not work.

**teylyn** · 09-14-2010, 09:12 PM

Your numbers are not numbers. They are text. You can see this by the green warning triangle in the corner.

To show single quotes around the cell content, regardless whether it's number or text, use this custom format:

'0';'-0';'0';'@'

Be aware that this is just formatting. The actual cell content does not change.

**EddyWirbelstrom** · 09-15-2010, 03:23 AM

In Excel 2003 I could format numbers with alpha characters by going Format Cells > Custom and selecting the number format eg. 0.00 then add ''alpha characters'' and the number would appear 0.00 alpha characters.
In Excel 2010 this does not work, I must go 0.00\a\l\p\h\a\ etc. a \ between each letter.
This is a backward step from Excel 2003

**teylyn** · 09-15-2010, 04:11 AM

Eddy, this is very close to a thread highjack. If you have a question, you should start your own thread.

custom format

0 "alpha"

works just fine for me in Excel 2010 and displays correctly as

123 alpha

see screenshot attachment.