Numbers Stored as Text in Excel
Numbers stored as text (or numbers stored as numbers when you expect them to be stored as text) can be tricky little buggers that cause no end of confusion when cells that by all appearances should match – don’t match.
Fortunately, just like everything else in Excel – once you understand the source of the confusion, it’s easy to work around. In the below video, I walk you through:
- Making Excel read cells as numbers – whether they’re stored as text or not!
- Forcing Excel to read numbers as text – for those occasions when you know it’s going to be more practical to work with text
- Getting Excel to match cells even when one of them is text and one is a number – and retaining that power when some clever little cookie changes our text to numbers!
This is what you’ll learn about in the video:
- Multiply by 1 – Multiplying anything by 1 forces Excel to read it as a number
- Concatenate with a blank text string – Joining a number with a blank text string ensures Excel will read it as text
- IFERROR – we’ll work with numbers stored as numbers or numbers stored as text, letting Excel work out which is the right one
Don’t skip the video though… If you’ve ever been confused by numbers being stored as text, it’ll be well worth your 6 minute investment. You’ll understand why it happens and learn some nifty little tricks you can use to easily overcome it.
Cheers!
Dani xo