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Excel 2003 cell formatting

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5 replies

by iainbuchanan

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When trying to format cells in Excel 2003 the command seems to be ignored ie, when changed to General it drops the starting 0 in number strings, like it should in Number format. Am I missing something because it is phasing me with regards to the general reliability.

5 replies

by deepsand

You are missing nothing; it's simply the way the "General" format is handled. Flaw or Feature depends in the eye of the beholder.

Quite frankly, I find the "General" format to be both ill defined & of dubious value. For fields which allow of mixed Alphanumeric values, I find that "Text" better and more often serves my needs.

Incidentally, with regard to the Sort function, if told to "Treat anything that looks like a Number as a Number," it will treat "123" in "General format & "0123" in "Text" format as [i]both[/i] being equivalent to "123" in "Numeric" format.

by iainbuchanan

I am aware of this work around however, the General format should allow for this as it is basically a catch all number format. Excel throws up an error message when you input digits into a text format it also left aligns them.

I am more concerned with the fact this is occuring at all as it makes me suspicious about the over all reliability of my spreadsheets.

by deepsand

Actually, it's an alphanumeric format. Given a "Text" format, that's why the "General" one is of no value that I've ever found.

by iainbuchanan

The answer to my own question is to use the Special format. I missinterpreted the help on General format. As it is a number format it will ofcourse drop leading 0's.

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