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...
I am using Office 365 for the PC.
You could try to manually set the format for the column ( that shouldn't calculate formulas / remove the commencing zero in numbers) to TEXT:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/format-numbers-as-text-583160db-936b-4e52-bdff-6f1863518ba4
Please keep in mind that numbers can't be in this format if you want to use them for calculations (e.g. substraction, summary, etc)
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/format-numbers-as-text-583160db-936b-4e52-bdff-6f1863518ba4
Please keep in mind that numbers can't be in this format if you want to use them for calculations (e.g. substraction, summary, etc)
Moriz_Kaufmann I did set the formatting to Text. Problem is things like equals signs and parentheses make Excel think you are trying to enter a formula or link to another cell if you click on another cell in the same or another Excel document. If I recall, I was able to put a single quote at the beginning of a line to tell Excel to treat the contents as text but forget if that also had limitations or not. Just didn't want those single quotes at the beginning of the text since I had to copy and paste everything back into the original program when done.