12 or more digits in a cell

[scharlene]

i have a column of numbers that I am pasting into a worksheet and they are 13
digits. i just need they listed as they are no funtion to
them(mathematical). how do i format that column so that the number appears.
i see it in the preview above when i highlight on it. but when it is in the
cell it has the + sign

 

[Mike]

format the cell as text

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Charlene (Scharlene ?),

You will have to use a format other than General
You could format them as TEXT since it sounds like they are identification and
not really treated as numbers. Pasting from plain text is not a problem but
pasting from a Rich Text source or from Excel will probably change the formatting,
unless you paste as values...
But if the are whole numbers up to 15 digits without leading zeros you could
use # as your fomat.

 

[Tushar Mehta]

i have a column of numbers that I am pasting into a worksheet and they are 13
digits. i just need they listed as they are no funtion to
them(mathematical). how do i format that column so that the number appears.
i see it in the preview above when i highlight on it. but when it is in the
cell it has the + sign

One option as others have indicated is to format the column as text
*before* entering the data.

Another option that will work with existing values as long as you have
no numbers with leading zeros is to use the Number format (zero
decimals and optional 'thousands separator') and increase the column
width so that XL shows a 12 digit number in its entirety.

--
Regards,

Tushar Mehta
www.tushar-mehta.com
Excel, PowerPoint, and VBA add-ins, tutorials
Custom MS Office productivity solutions

 

[Ed Ferrero]

Hi scharlene,

Yet another suggestion, use a custom number format like "0 000 000 000 000"

Enter this using the menu item Format - Cells... click on the custom entry
at
the bottom of the list, enter the format code (all the zeroes and spaces
between
the quotes) in the Type box.

This formats a number as follows
1234567891234 --> 1 234 567 891 234
456789 --> 0 000 000 456 789

Ed Ferrero
http://edferrero.m6.net/