formatting cells that wont reformat

[SamS]

Have data which has been exported from a third party program. It has this strange quirk of embedding a format into a range of cells eg I have deleted data from an entire column as it was irrelevant and tried to use a formula to extract data that I needed but the result would be just TEXT ie if I type =A1+B1 I would get =A1+B1 in the cell and not the result. Similarily other formats such as dates etc seem to keep this format even though I go through the Format Cell/Number options. Is there a way of over riding this problem.

 

[Peter_SSs]

eg I have deleted data from an entire column as it was irrelevant and tried to use a formula to extract data that I needed but the result would be just TEXT ie if I type =A1+B1 I would get =A1+B1 in the cell and not the result.

For this column, try this (assuming you have put the formulas in already):
1. If you have not already done so, format the column as General, Number, Date etc as required
2. Select the column
3. Data|Text to Columns...|Finish

 

[SamS]

Thanks Peter, will give it a try today and let you know.