I want Excel to transform the symbol "½" to .5 for me. Possible??

[Mitch]

Hi guys,

I found a source that would be of tremendous value to me if not for this
little bug. The halfs or .5's is expressed using the little symbol "½"
(located on "Shift + Paragraph" key on my notebook) instead of figures. Now,
all the cells containing this little character is automatically formatted as
text and those without it is formatted as numbers when I paste or web query
this source. I would really appreciate any help in making Excel format the
"½" (little bugger) as .5 so I can use this source for calculations. Just to
clarify, the data could look like this:

4
2
3½
7
9½
8

So it's a mixture of plain numbers and this symbol and there's no other
decimals involved than the halfs.

Regards
Mitch

 

[Ron Coderre]

Try this:
Select the range of impacted cells
Edit>Replace
Find what: ½
Replace with: .5
Click the [Replace All] button

Does that help?

***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP-Pro

 

[Mitch]

Thanks Ron, that worked. Just for the record, is there any way of using the
Custom format to help me here? Since I'm constantly updating the data a web
query would be perfect here but unless there's a automated function that
would help me here I'm afraid I'll have to do the Replace procedure manually
every time.. I have heard about macros but i'm not sure i'm ready to use
them...

Regards,

Mitch

Try this:
Select the range of impacted cells
Edit>Replace
Find what: ½
Replace with: .5
Click the [Replace All] button

Does that help?

***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP-Pro

Hi guys,

I found a source that would be of tremendous value to me if not for this
little bug. The halfs or .5's is expressed using the little symbol "½"
(located on "Shift + Paragraph" key on my notebook) instead of figures. Now,
all the cells containing this little character is automatically formatted as
text and those without it is formatted as numbers when I paste or web query
this source. I would really appreciate any help in making Excel format the
"½" (little bugger) as .5 so I can use this source for calculations. Just to
clarify, the data could look like this:

4
2
3½
7
9½
8

So it's a mixture of plain numbers and this symbol and there's no other
decimals involved than the halfs.

Regards
Mitch