Unwanted hyphen appears in calculated cell

[TechByter]

I have created a small spreadsheet with three columns: % completion, count down from 67, and date. The first column uses =(67-B3)/67 formatted as % to display the progress to a future date. Excel has added a hyphen-like character at the left edge of every calculated cell EXCEPT the first calculated cell. This doesn't affect the usability, but the the extra visual junk is an annoyance and I haven't been able to figure out how to eliminate it. If you've seen this and know how to fix it, please let me know.
Thanks!

 

[Drrellik]

Hello and welcome to the board,

Let’s try two ways first are you able to manually select the second cell with the character in it and backspace or delete the character?

If you can manually delete that one character, then you can use Control +H to open up a find and replace box where you can type that character and in the replace leave it blank and do a find all or replace all

Number two : If that doesn’t work or you’re not able to create that same character select your first cell that does not have that character and then “Double” click on format painter little paintbrush in the top left corner, then you should be able to drag down across the other cells.

If those don’t allow you to remove it remember to check cell formatting for that row should be same as cell one

HTH ~DR

 

[TechByter]

Hello and welcome to the board,

Let’s try two ways first are you able to manually select the second cell with the character in it and backspace or delete the character?

If you can manually delete that one character, then you can use Control +H to open up a find and replace box where you can type that character and in the replace leave it blank and do a find all or replace all

Number two : If that doesn’t work or you’re not able to create that same character select your first cell that does not have that character and then “Double” click on format painter little paintbrush in the top left corner, then you should be able to drag down across the other cells.

If those don’t allow you to remove it remember to check cell formatting for that row should be same as cell one

HTH ~DR

Thanks, DR. I should have mentioned what I had already tried. Those are the two steps I had tried.

 

[Alex Blakenburg]

Ideally provide us an XL2BB of your data. Or put a copy on a shared service such as Dropbox, Google Drive etc and make it available to anyone with the link.
If neither of those work for you can try and
1) Give an image like the one you have above but with A3 selected and showing us the formula bar in the image as well.
2) Give us an image of the format cells dialogue box that comes up with A3 selected and you hit Ctrl+1
3) Copy A3 and PasteSpecial value to an empty cell and show us the formula bar result in the new cell.


XL2BB
MrExcel has a tool called “XL2BB” that lets you post samples of your data that will allow us to copy/paste it to our Excel spreadsheets, so we can work with the same copy of data that you are. Instructions on using this tool can be found here: XL2BB Add-in

Note that there is also a "Test Here” forum on this board. This is a place where you can test using this tool (or any other posting techniques that you want to test) before trying to use those tools in your actual posts.

 

[TechByter]

Thanks, Alex. Here is a link to MayDayCountdown2024.xlsx on Google Drive.
This is a silly spreadsheet that simply counts down the days remaining to 1 May 2024 and shows the percentage of days consumed starting on 24 Feb 2024. So column C is a long date that uses a formula to increment the counter on each line [=C2+1]. Column B starts with 67 and is decremented on each line [=B2-1]. Column A subtracts the value in Column B from 67 and then divides the difference by 67 to get the percentage of days remaining [=(67-B3)/67]. Conditional formatting is used to highlight the current day.
Although I have called the extra mark a hyphen, it appears to be something else because it's shorter than a hyphen.

 

[TechByter]

Column A subtracts the value in Column B from 67 and then divides the difference by 67 to get the percentage of days remaining [=(67-B3)/67].

Should be: Column A subtracts the value in Column B from 67 and then divides the difference by 67 to get the percentage of days used [=(67-B3)/67].

 

[Alex Blakenburg]

Well that was interesting. Follow these steps:
• Ctrl+F10 (will bring up the object selection pane on the right)
• You will see a whole heap of Ink objects
• Select 1 of the items in the pane and hit ctrl+A (that will select them all - you will also see the objects selected on the sheet)
• hit the delete key
they should now all be gone.

 

[TechByter]

Well that was interesting. Follow these steps:
• Ctrl+F10 (will bring up the object selection pane on the right)
• You will see a whole heap of Ink objects
• Select 1 of the items in the pane and hit ctrl+A (that will select them all - you will also see the objects selected on the sheet)
• hit the delete key
they should now all be gone.

Ctrl+F10 didn't do the trick, but Alt-F10 did.
I started creating this sheet on a touch-enabled device and that's doubtless where the mark came from.
Thanks! I never would have thought of that.

 

[Alex Blakenburg]

Oops sorry, glad you figured out the alt+F10 and that it worked 4 you. Having access to the workbook was a big help.
I was curious as to how they got there so appreciate the feedback.

 

[Peter_SSs]

Another simple way to select & delete all those objects
F5 -> Special ... -> Objects -> OK -> Delete