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excel default type of cell
i am finding that when i enter a formula ( e.g. -a1+a2 ) that i am getting an error that this is the wrong type of data . how do i rectify this error
In a newly created workbook, all cells are formatted as in the Normal style.
If you have created a default template Book.xltx, the style from that template will be used.
Otherwise, Normal will be as follows:
Note: the font depends on the setting in File > Options > General.
they just contain numbers with one decimal point.
If you set the horizontal alignment of A1 and A2 to General, are the values left-aligned or right-aligned? If they are left-aligned, they are text values even if they look like numbers.
You should be able to correct that by selecting each cell, pressing F2 then Enter.
- thank you hans for your reply . i have found that the alignment is to the left , but if i do F2 enter nothing changes
i would like to send you the small spreadsheet for you to look at but i dont know how to attech to my reply? pleas tell me
many thanks
fredYou can send me a PM with an attachment - click on my user avatar.
- Hello hans and thank you for your advice.
No , I didn’t copy these values from another spreadsheet.
I opened excel and clicked “new” so it opened a blank spreadsheet
I checked the formatting by clicking the top left corner and set the formatting to general
I then proceeded to enter the values.
Did I do something wrong? I have not noticed this problem before and I have used excel for years.
When a new spreadsheet is opened what is the default formatting that it should be?
I seem to remember that excel used to understand that it was characters or numbers by itself?
What happened was that I recently ( by mistake ) allowed windows (Microsoft) to update itself.
This resulted in a major loss of data and settings and since then I have experienced this problem.
On a “new” blank worksheet what setting should be in the format section shown in the top left corner?
Many,many thanks
Fred Evans