Single quote mark ' mark at the beginning of a cell

[voodoo]

This is hopefully an easy question.

Does anyone know what the single quotation mark ' means when entered at the beginning of a cell.

The background is I have been asked to create a macro and I have been sent a template by the cutomer giving formatting and some data.

I notice that the quitation mark does not atually appear in the cell. In other words it appears in the formula bar when entered but disappears from the cell once you press enter.

Before running the macro the user will select an option from two possibilties in a combo box. Depending which they select the macro will enter the selction in the cell in question. The entry is actually in Japanese but this is an example of what is in the cell in the template.

'<<Equity>>

The options being "equity" or "equity broker". I dont know if the << >> marks mean anything either.

 

[PaddyD]

[No message]

 

[NateO]

The ' will left-justify the cell's underlyings behind the apostrophe and effectively convert everything following it to text. Whereas<> is typically a numeric operation in XL (not equal to). Hope this helps.

_________________
Cheers,<font size=+2><font color="red"> Nate<font color="blue">O</font></font></font>

This message was edited by NateO on 2002-05-13 21:45

 

[RichardS]

The ' tends to signify text. For example, if you wanted the cell to display
=2354???, and just entered those characters, Excel would return an error, because it thinks you are trying to enter a formula. If you put a ' at the front, it will display
everything but the '.
HTH
Richard

 

[PaddyD]

The only time I've come across single quotes with no other obvious purpose is when users have used them to force excel to recognise long number strings (eg credit card numbers) as text when they haven't properly formatted the cells.

Not really an answer, I know, but every little helps?!?

Paddy