Comments on: Excel – ‘Number Stored as Text’

By: Josh Hardin

Josh Hardin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:30:57 +0000

For some reason the ‘not equals’ operator was lost when my post was translated to HTML. The line containing ‘iCell.Value = iCell.Value’ should have the ‘not equals’ operator before the “0″ in the ‘if’ statement.

By: Josh Hardin

Josh Hardin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:30:36 +0000

This is how it’s done, for most normal situations (ie, not French users).

Public Sub ConvertNumbersStoredAsText(WSName$)
Application.EnableEvents = False ‘prevent triggering event macros
Dim iCell
With ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(WSName)
For Each iCell In .UsedRange.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeConstants, xlTextValues).Cells
If iCell.Errors.Item(xlNumberAsText).Value Then
If (Left(iCell.Text, 1) “0″) Then iCell.Value = iCell.Value ‘skip cells with leading zeros
End If
Next
End With
Application.EnableEvents = True
End Sub

By: Renee

Renee — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:34:55 +0000

I am using the Text to Columns method and it seems there is a bug. If the topmost row(s) is not populated and the entire column is selected, the pasted cells jump up a few rows – sometimes 4 rows, sometimes 2.

??????

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:50:34 +0000

I have tried the paste special using either add 0 or multipy 1. Doesn’t work.

Text to Columns doesn’t work.

And copy and paste special – valuse only doesn’t work.

I have no knowledge of macroes or vb.

Any suggestions?

By: perplexed

perplexed — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:09:18 +0000

I am programatically creating a csv file for export to other systems. Some things that need to be exported are defined as character and can be up to 50 characters long. If a user happens to fill those fields with numerics, Excel converts them to numeric representation such as 1.71717171717171E+29. I can not expect my users to convert all of this before using the file. How can I keep this from happening?

By: cmiles

cmiles — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 05:15:21 +0000

Gary – really interesting comment about the French, I have not seen that mentioned before and that it would have bugged me too to find out about the , to . switch. If you find a work around let me know, I will have to experiment more with other languages…

Charles

By: Gary Bouwman

Gary Bouwman — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:31:55 +0000

OK. It was a great solution, but I’ve found a situation that does not work. When the PC region is set to French, texttocolumn converts the cell to a value as expected, with on exception. When the cell was already evaluated as numeric (no green triangles), it replaces the comma with a period for the decimal, and that cell is now text (with a green triangle).
What bugs me is this texttoolumn solution works well for other language regions.

By: Gary Bouwman

Gary Bouwman — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:47:05 +0000

I’ve tried several of the methods you refer to with some success. Your example for text-to-column is the only method that has worked for me so far. My particular issue is coding for use in a global environment. These simple methods all worked when my PC was set to US (English), but not when set to Germany (German) … until the text-to-column trick. Great workaround. I would never have thought to look at that as a fix.

Gary

By: cmiles

cmiles — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:50:19 +0000

erik – I like .UsedRange as well (although a quick search will reveal that many people have found it to be troublesome in some situations and use other methods to get the ‘used range’) – you should be able to simplify your code by just using:

Sub valueISvalue()

Activesheet.UsedRange.Value = _
Activesheet.UsedRange.Value

End Sub

[range].value = [range].value methods are quite fast – although (as I mentioned above) I do have one report (from a web interface) for which this method does not work.

CAM

By: erik

erik — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:34:51 +0000

Simple code to provide for range.value=range.value
Works very fast since it only takes the used cell for re-evaluation

Sub valueISvalue()
‘
‘ valueISvalue Macro
‘ Macro recorded 25-09-2006 by Erik Esveld
‘

‘
For Each mycell In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
mycell.Value = mycell.Value
Next
End Sub