Numbers in cells not responding to Format Cells

[texasphil]

I work with an accounting software primarily for schools, churche
called Logos Management Software. It has General Ledger, A/P an
Payroll modules, Reporting and more. Reports can be exported to Exce
which I do regularly.

Today I imported an income and expense report. In the imported Exce
spreadsheet the amounts/numbers in the cells are left justified with
sign, commas and decimal at 2 places. Until today’s import, I have ha
no problem highlighting the amounts/numbers, right click, select Forma
Cells, select Number, select 2 decimal places, comma and the number
would move to the right and drop the $ sign.

With the report I imported today, I highlighted the amounts/numbers
right click, select Format Cells, select Number, select 2 decima
places, select comma, clicked ok and nothing happens....th
amounts/numbers remained as is. What is strange is when I selec
Number in the Format Cells dialog box, in the Sample box the $ sig
remains. I can enter a number in another empty cell and can forma
that number successfully.

Thanks for any suggestions.

texasphi

 

[Dave Peterson]

Lots of times, there's extra characters in those cells that make the value
non-numeric.

If you retype one of the entries, does it work ok?

If you have way too many to do this manually, you may want to try David
McRitchie's routine to clean the data:

http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/join.htm#trimall
(look for "Sub Trimall()")

If you're new to macros, you may want to read David McRitchie's intro at:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

If the data is left aligned and you don't have any alignment set, the data
is text, here's one way that might help

copy an empty cell, select the import and do edit>paste special and select
add, now try to format the
data

--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

Northwest Excel Solutions

www.nwexcelsolutions.com

(remove ^^ from email address)

Portland, Oregon

 

[stfarrar]

Another solution that may work is to put the number 1 in a cell, copy
it, then Paste-Special-Multiply to your data