How do I force Excel to store numbers as text?

Format numbers as text

1. Select the cell or range of cells that contains the numbers that you want to format as text. How to select cells or a range.
2. On the Home tab, in the Number group, click the arrow next to the Number Format box, and then click Text.

How do I convert numbers to text without losing zeros in Excel?

To do this, you can do one of two things:

1. Format the column as Text. Select your data range and press Ctrl+1 to launch the Format > Cells dialog. On the Number tab, click Text.
2. Use the apostrophe character. You can type an apostrophe (‘) in front of the number, and Excel will treat it as text.

How to convert numbers from text to numbers in Excel?

Select a column. Select a column with this problem. If you don’t want to convert the whole column, you can select one or more cells instead. Just be sure the cells you select are in the same column, otherwise this process won’t work. (See “Other ways to convert” below if you have this problem in more than one column.)

How to use text to columns in Excel?

To access Text to Columns, you can also use the keyboard shortcut – ALT + A + E. Now let’s dive in and see some amazing stuff you can do with Text to Columns in Excel. Suppose you have a dataset as shown below: To quickly split the first name and the last name and get these in separate cells, follow the below steps: Select the data set.

How do you format cells in Excel as text?

Select the cell or range of cells that contains the numbers that you want to format as text. How to select cells or a range. Tip: You can also select empty cells, and then enter numbers after you format the cells as text. Those numbers will be formatted as text.

What does it mean when number is stored as text in Excel?

This error indicator tells you that the number is stored as text, as shown in this example. If this isn’t what you want, you can follow these steps to convert the number that is stored as text back to a regular number.