Graphing Formulas

[Robby87]

Have several ranges of data that are input as "###-###" I am trying to graph. Doing a High - Low - Mid so I needed to separate them.
Used a =LEFT( and =RIGHT( formula to grab the numbers from....the left and right...

Manual inputs worked, but once I have the formulas (=LEFT('Sheet1!'G22,3) for example, in the cell the graph just goes to 0 and stops reading the numbers.

Any reason why excel cannot graph these values, even when the cells are formatted as numbers?

Please help!!

Rob

 

[pgc01]

Hi Rob

Formats are aesthetics, it's to make it look nice to you. Excel usually uses the values, not the formats.

I believe the values are in this case text values, as Left() is a string function.

Confirm it writing in a cell

=ISNUMBER(cell reference)

Try converting them to numbers. In a cell formatted as General or Number, use instead

=VALUE(LEFT('Sheet1!'G22,3))

or

=LEFT('Sheet1!'G22,3) + 0

as an arithmetic operation causes a automatic conversion of the operands to number.

 

[Robby87]

That is possibly the easiest fix ever... I suppose I should bother to actually learn some more of the basics of excel so that I don't have to bug you guys for stuff like this.
(yes, your solution works 100%)

Thanks for the suggestion and the explanation of the mechanics!! Always get great help on this board!!

Hope someone else can be helped by this.

Thanks,
Rob