Weird characters at beginning of cell

[jdelcour]

Hello All,

Some of the cells of a workbook contain either an apostrophe or a comm
on the left but do not appear in the formula bar. I have tried to ge
rid of them by changing the style, format or template but they keep o
showing up.
Any idea how to delete these weird characters ?

Many thanks in advance,

Jo

 

[Dave Peterson]

If they're apostrophes, maybe they're there to tell excel to treat the value as
text.

You may be able to hide them by:
tools|options|transition tab|uncheck Transition navigation keys.

These can be very useful if you want to enter 7-18 and not want excel to change
it to a date. (Using '7-18 (or preformatting the cell as text) will stop excel
from seeing that entry as a date.)

 

[jdelcour]

Thanks for your reply Dave. Unfortunately, the transition keys were
already deselected.

Even if there are no data present in the cells, the commas or
apostrophes still appear. The only way I found to get rid of them is to
physically delete the cells. Any clue ? - I have attached a copy of the
workbook

 

[Dave Peterson]

First, I don't see the attachment. I don't read the newsgroups through
excelforum.

Second, try this:
=len(a1)
change a1 to point at a cell with only that apostrophe.

If you see 0, you can try this:

Select the range to fix
edit|Replace
what: (leave blank)
with: $$$$$
replace all

Then with that range still selected
edit|Replace
what: $$$$$
with: (leave blank)
replace all

All the cells with a single apostrophe should be cleared.