Cell content differes from formula bar

[philtyler]

I posted this earlier but I've lost the thread

I imported a database from !ACT into Excel which includes a phon
number column. Some phone numbers are like this: (603)123-4567 an
others are like 603-123-4567.They sort seperately so I'd like to edi
the numbers to eliminate the parenthesis.
The problem is that when I select the cell the parenthesis disappea
and they aren't there in the formula bar so I can't edit to fix

Reformatting the whole column as a phone number has no effect

 

[Guest]

One thing that you can do to check the real contents of the cells is copy the
column and paste in a new worksheet with "Paste values". That should get rid
of the parenthesis if they are format induced.

Hope this helps,
Miguel.

 

[Dave O]

You might try this solution- but make a *backup* of your data so you
don't lose anything. Hightlight the column in question; click >Edit

 

[philtyler]

One thing that you can do to check the real contents of the cells is
copy the
column and paste in a new worksheet with "Paste values". That should
get rid
of the parenthesis if they are format induced.

Hope this helps,
Miguel.

When I did this there was no change, it simply duplicated the column I
had.

 

[philtyler]

You might try this solution- but make a *backup* of your data so you
don't lose anything. Hightlight the column in question; click >Edit
leave the "replace with" box blank, and press Replace All. Then clic
. This should standardize all your entries, barring any input entrie
that may have occurred.

Clever solution; except it didn't work because when Excel tries to fin
the first parenthesis it can't, it says none found. So I'm kind of bac
to square 1

I'd be glad to send someone the file if they're real curious about i