Forum Discussion
How to get Excel to treat values as text with no functions or cell links?
I have text in an Excel spreadsheet that has @ and = signs. By default, it thinks I want to link a cell into a function whenever I try to copy or update text in a cell. Is there a way to turn off thi...
The data is actually in tabular form for the Excel files I am working with. For the more complicated ones I do copy to a text editor and paste the updated text into excel, but even then it tries to link to the next cell I click on which is annoying. Plus the issue also happens with some other Excel documents that I am just trying to copy text from and don't want to update anything.
Have you tried switching the number format of an entire sheet to TEXT?
Bear in mind that no formula will work on the sheet and all apparent numbers are actually text characters.
Bear in mind that no formula will work on the sheet and all apparent numbers are actually text characters.
Yes, I have tried that. But it does not actually work that way. It did allow me to switch cells without stopping me due to an invalid calculation though. Functions are still treated as functions and it will still try to link the cells on me. Setting the format to text just allows you to do things like enter 01 into the cell and have it display as text "01" and not be treated as a number and display 1.