Refreshing formulas and formats???

  • Thread starter Thread starter William DeLeo
  • Start date Start date
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William DeLeo

I have been perplexed with how some of my sheets have been
behaving lately. There are times when I change the cell
format but it doesn't actually change until I click into
the cell. For example ... I have a formula set to sum a
range, but some of the cells are stored as text. I choose
the range and choose format cells to change them to number
format, but the change doesn't take effect until I enter
the cell and click out again. Another example, I just
pasted a column of data into a sheet with formulas and the
same happened ... the folmula doesn't calculate correctly
until I click into the newly pasted cells and click out
again.

With this particular example, the folmula was:

=IF(ISBLANK(B3),"<","") ... basically enter a less than
symbol whenever the cell to the left is blank.

All I can guess is that it has something to do with
text/number formatting?????

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks so much.
 
When you change a Text Cell's format from Text to Number/General, then you're
not altering the value in the cell--excel still sees it as text.

One of the quickest ways to convert the "text numbers" to "number numbers" is
1. select an empty cell,
2. Copy it
3. Select your range of "misbehaving" numbers
4. Edit|Paste special|click Add

Excel will see that it's trying to do an arithmetic operation and coerce the
entry to a real number.
 
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