Apostrofe in cell by default

[Duardo]

In my colleagues Excel (2000), when you enter text or numbers in a Cell, an
apostrofe appears in front of the data in the cell by default.
Restarting Excel does not help.
As Excel considers this to be text, we run into problems with dates etc.
Any idea what causes this?

 

[Fred Smith]

Sounds like the cell is formatted for Text. Format it as General, then
re-enter your data. Does that solve the problem?

Regards,
Fred.

 

[Duardo]

Hi Fred,
I know about this. Format is general. Change does not help. It is default
for all cells.

 

[RCW]

If you're sure the apostrophe isn't there on purpose to protect leading zeros
or numbers (like long part numbers) that would change to scientific notation,
just insert a new sheet, copy all the cells at once, and then PASTE SPECIAL -
VALUES only into the new sheet and the ' should be gone.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Are you sure that the cells are not formatted as text? It sure sounds like they
are.

There's a setting in excel that allows you to see this apostrophe
prefixcharacter:
Tools|Options|Transition Tab|Uncheck "Transition Navigation keys"
to turn it off.

But this won't affect numbers or dates. But cells formatted as Text will have
this problem with numbers/dates.

 

[Gord Dibben]

Tools>Options>Transition.

Clear out the Transition Options.

See if that helps. Although you should still be able to enter numbers with
those options enabled so not sure what's going on.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Duardo]

Thanks for this.

I had checked this tab already, and nothing is set here, same a my Excel
(without this problem).
Nothing is formatted, this is default as you start up (his) Excel. Cell
format is General. All cells have the apostrofe. Dates are effected, not
recognised as dates, but text.

Could this be the result of a macro (used in other files) There are no
macro's in his file.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I still don't have a guess, but you can check to see if it's a macro by starting
excel in safe mode and then test it out.

Close Excel
Windows start button|Run
type:
excel /safe
and hit enter

Then try it out.

Starting in safe mode will prohibit macros from even starting (along with some
other stuff).