The cells are probably not locked.
The issue is the "/" that is a non-numeric character. Excel does not
know what to do with it so it makes the entire cell "Text".
Using format -> special -> will not work because Excel does not
recognize the "/" character as a valid separator.
To make the change you will have to use some type of formula such as
="(" & LEFT(D2,3) & ") " & MID(D2,5,3) & "-" & RIGHT(D2,4),
but to do this you will have another column with the phone number, that
will have to be cut and pasted back to where your original column.
Or you could use a VBA macro such as
Sub Reformat()
Dim dblRowCounter As Double
dblRowCounter = 1
Do While Cells(dblRowCounter, 1) <> ""
Cells(dblRowCounter, 1) = "(" & Left(Cells(dblRowCounter, 1),
3) & ") " & _
Mid(Cells(dblRowCounter, 1), 5, 3) & "-" & _
Right(Cells(dblRowCounter, 1), 4)
dblRowCounter = dblRowCounter + 1
Loop
End Sub
this will loop through all of the cells in column "A" and make the
change for you.