Very Simple formatting Question

[Quin]

I thought I understood most aspects of formatting numbers and text in Excel
until this came up...

I have a spread sheet with numbers. I select the numbers and then right
click to Format Cells and I select currency. The spread sheet seems to
ignore the currency formatting and does not put in the dollar signs. What is
worse than that is the column of numbers will not sort correctly. If I sort
it gives me an incorrect sort order like:
119.42
12.62
120.38
122.43
Any idea what is going on?

Quin

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

I thought I understood most aspects of formatting numbers and text in Excel
until this came up...

I have a spread sheet with numbers. I select the numbers and then right
click to Format Cells and I select currency. The spread sheet seems to
ignore the currency formatting and does not put in the dollar signs. What is
worse than that is the column of numbers will not sort correctly. If I sort
it gives me an incorrect sort order like:
119.42
12.62
120.38
122.43
Any idea what is going on?

Quin

Your values were either
1. Entered as text
2. Entered in a column which had been pre-formatted as text
3. Imported from the web and have a trailing nbsp.

To confirm, try this formula:

=ISTEXT(cell_ref) where cell_ref is a cell containing one of these values that
won't convert.

To convert, first try:

Select empty cell
Edit/Copy

Select column of values
Edit/Paste Special/Add

If that does not work, then enter this formula in an adjacent cell:

=--TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(cell_ref,CHAR(160),""))

and fill down as far as required.

Then

Edit/Cut
select original data (after making a backup)
Edit/Paste Special/Values

--ron

 

[Mike H]

Hi,

If your formatted as currency you have to re-enter the data to make that
take effect. Select the cells in turn and tap F2 & enter and you should see
your new format.

the problem was probably cause by the cell being formatted as text before
you enntered the numbers.

Mike

 

[Quin]

Ron,

Your post was very helpful. Your guess was right about imported data from
the web. It turns out that there were non-printing characters in the cells
that prevented normal formatting and sorting behavior.

I tried all your suggestions. IsText() function returns TRUE. So yes, even
though I format as currency, Excel continues to treat the data as text.

The Edit/PasteSpecial/Add suggestion did not work.

The Trim function you suggested does work but I found another helpful
procedure. When I Googled "Excel Non-Printing Characters" Here is that
solution...

START QUOTE FROM http://www.icehouse.net/jim_d/excel3.html

TO REMOVE NON-PRINTING CHARACTERS:

Select one of the problem cells.
Press F2 to Edit the cell.
Press End to move the blinking insertion point to the end of the cell
contents.
Hold down Shift and press the Left-arrow key once, to select/highlight the
last character in the cell.
Copy that character to the Clipboard. (You may then need to press Esc a
couple of times to get out of Edit mode.)
Select all the cells with the problem data in them.
From the menus, do Edit, Replace; click in Find What and Paste in your
invisible mystery character from the Clipboard. Leave Replace With blank.
Click Replace All.

END QUOTE

The site quoted above has lots of information on this. I also used the
LEN() function to discover the length of the data in the cells. In my case
length was longer than the visible characters. I also used CODE(RIGHT()) to
discover non-printing characters CHAR(160) to the right.

Ultimately I repaired my sheet with find and replace as described in the
procedure above. I also learned something about hidden characters.

Thanks for your help,

Quin

 

[Ron Rosenfeld]

Ron,

Your post was very helpful. Your guess was right about imported data from
the web. It turns out that there were non-printing characters in the cells
that prevented normal formatting and sorting behavior.

Glad you got it working.
--ron