Fomat Cell

[Harold]

I'm trying to format an Excel spreadsheet cell to accept the number 08-83.
When I type 08-83 in the disired cell and tab to the next cell the numbers
30529 appear. I do not want to have to enter an apostrophe ' ahead of the
number to overwrite my entry, help! Thanks.

 

[akphidelt]

highlight the cells and format the cells to text.

 

[reno]

another way is to custom format, you can format the cell as 0#"-"## , that
way in your case you can enter on the keyboard 883 and the cell shows 08-83,
and would be treated as 883 for sorting purpose, or for using in lookup
tables--this puts leading zero only if one is necessary 1234 entered yields
12-34 showing in the cell