Clear Range.PrefixCharacter without losing formatting in VBA

[ttt123]

How can I remove Range.PrefixCharacter from a cell without removing all of its formatting? Note that Range.PrefixCharacter is readonly.

Sub Test()
    Dim cell As Range
    Set cell = Range("$A$1")
    
    'Set some example formatting that we ideally don't want to be removed
    cell.Font.Bold = True
    cell.Interior.Color = RGB(255, 0, 0)
    
    'Set initial cell value including prefix character
    cell.Value = "'abc"
    
    Call SetNewCellValue(cell, "def", False)
    'Call SetNewCellValue(cell, "def", True)
    
    If cell.PrefixCharacter = "'" Then
        MsgBox "Cell still has PrefixCharacter"
    End If
End Sub

Sub SetNewCellValue(cell As Range, newValue As Variant, clearFormats As Boolean)
    If clearFormats Then
        'This will clear cell.PrefixCharacter but will also remove all other cell formatting
        cell.clearFormats
    End If
    
    cell.Value = newValue
End Sub

 

[rlv01]

In playing around with this, it looks to me like there is a flag in the cell's format data structure, that once set, is always set for non-numeric cell data, until the format is cleared.

My question would be: under what circumstances does this matter? All the string functions appear to make no distinction.