Excel adding numbers with text

Convert numbers stored as text to numbers

Numbers that are stored as text can cause unexpected results, like an uncalculated formula showing instead of a result. Most of the time, Excel will recognize this and you’ll see an alert next to the cell where numbers are being stored as text. If you see the alert, select the cells, and then click to choose a convert option.

Check out Format numbers to learn more about formatting numbers and text in Excel.

If the alert button is not available, do the following:

1. Select a column

Select a column with this problem. If you don’t want to convert the whole column, you can select one or more cells instead. Just be sure the cells you select are in the same column, otherwise this process won’t work. (See «Other ways to convert» below if you have this problem in more than one column.)

2. Click this button

The Text to Columns button is typically used for splitting a column, but it can also be used to convert a single column of text to numbers. On the Data tab, click Text to Columns.

3. Click Apply

The rest of the Text to Columns wizard steps are best for splitting a column. Since you’re just converting text in a column, you can click Finish right away, and Excel will convert the cells.

4. Set the format

Press CTRL + 1 (or + 1 on the Mac). Then select any format.

Note: If you still see formulas that are not showing as numeric results, then you may have Show Formulas turned on. Go to the Formulas tab and make sure Show Formulas is turned off.

Other ways to convert:

You can use the VALUE function to return just the numeric value of the text.

1. Insert a new column

Insert a new column next to the cells with text. In this example, column E contains the text stored as numbers. Column F is the new column.

2. Use the VALUE function

In one of the cells of the new column, type =VALUE() and inside the parentheses, type a cell reference that contains text stored as numbers. In this example it’s cell E23.

3. Rest your cursor here

Now you’ll fill the cell’s formula down, into the other cells. If you’ve never done this before, here’s how to do it: Rest your cursor on the lower-right corner of the cell until it changes to a plus sign.

4. Click and drag down

Click and drag down to fill the formula to the other cells. After that’s done, you can use this new column, or you can copy and paste these new values to the original column. Here’s how to do that: Select the cells with the new formula. Press CTRL + C. Click the first cell of the original column. Then on the Home tab, click the arrow below Paste, and then click Paste Special > Values.

If the steps above didn’t work, you can use this method, which can be used if you’re trying to convert more than one column of text.

Select a blank cell that doesn’t have this problem, type the number 1 into it, and then press Enter.

Press CTRL + C to copy the cell.

Select the cells that have numbers stored as text.

On the Home tab, click Paste > Paste Special.

Click Multiply, and then click OK. Excel multiplies each cell by 1, and in doing so, converts the text to numbers.

Press CTRL + 1 (or + 1 on the Mac). Then select any format.

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Combine text and numbers

Let’s say you need to create a grammatically correct sentence from several columns of data to prepare a mass mailing. Or, maybe you need to format numbers with text without affecting formulas that use those numbers. In Excel, there are several ways to combine text and numbers.

Use a number format to display text before or after a number in a cell

If a column that you want to sort contains both numbers and text—such as Product #15, Product #100, Product #200—it may not sort as you expect. You can format cells that contain 15, 100, and 200 so that they appear in the worksheet as Product #15, Product #100, and Product #200.

Use a custom number format to display the number with text—without changing the sorting behavior of the number. In this way, you change how the number appears without changing the value.

Follow these steps:

Select the cells that you want to format.

On the Home tab, in the Number group, click the arrow .

In the Category list, click a category such as Custom, and then click a built-in format that resembles the one that you want.

In the Type field, edit the number format codes to create the format that you want.

To display both text and numbers in a cell, enclose the text characters in double quotation marks (» «), or precede the numbers with a backslash ().

NOTE: Editing a built-in format does not remove the format.

12 as Product #12

The text enclosed in the quotation marks (including a space) is displayed before the number in the cell. In the code, «0» represents the number contained in the cell (such as 12).

12:00 as 12:00 AM EST

The current time is shown using the date/time format h:mm AM/PM, and the text «EST» is displayed after the time.

-12 as $-12.00 Shortage and 12 as $12.00 Surplus

$0.00 «Surplus»;$-0.00 «Shortage»

The value is shown using a currency format. In addition, if the cell contains a positive value (or 0), «Surplus» is displayed after the value. If the cell contains a negative value, «Shortage» is displayed instead.

Combine text and numbers from different cells into the same cell by using a formula

When you do combine numbers and text in a cell, the numbers become text and no longer function as numeric values. This means that you can no longer perform any math operations on them.

To combine numbers, use the CONCATENATE or CONCAT, TEXT or TEXTJOIN functions, and the ampersand (&) operator.

In Excel 2016, Excel Mobile, and Excel for the web, CONCATENATE has been replaced with the CONCAT function. Although the CONCATENATE function is still available for backward compatibility, you should consider using CONCAT, because CONCATENATE may not be available in future versions of Excel.

TEXTJOIN combines the text from multiple ranges and/or strings, and includes a delimiter you specify between each text value that will be combined. If the delimiter is an empty text string, this function will effectively concatenate the ranges. TEXTJOIN is not available in Excel 2013 and previous versions.

Examples

See various examples in the figure below.

Look closely at the use of the TEXT function in the second example in the figure. When you join a number to a string of text by using the concatenation operator, use the TEXT function to control the way the number is shown. The formula uses the underlying value from the referenced cell (.4 in this example) — not the formatted value you see in the cell (40%). You use the TEXT function to restore the number formatting.

Need more help?

You can always ask an expert in the Excel Tech Community or get support in the Answers community.

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Number Formatting in Excel — All You Need to Know

by Adam | Apr 2, 2018 | Blog

If you used Excel in any shape or form, there is a pretty good chance that you’ve used the formatting and number formatting features. Formatting options like number, currency, percentage, date and time values are easily accessible to users. However, that’s not all there is in the world of text and number formatting. Going down the rabbit hole, custom formatting can help you fully configure Excel’s built-in settings for formatting.

The main advantage of this approach is that you can alter the look of your data without changing the actual values. This means that you do not need to use additional spaces or formulas to create the layout you want and preserve the raw data.

If you want to modify your data anyways, or need to change a value inside a formula, you can use the TEXT function with all custom formatting syntax we are going to cover in this article. It should be noted that the TEXT function returns a text, and the return value cannot be used in mathematical calculations. If you do, you will receive a #VALUE! error. In this article we’re going to be using a workbook template. You can download it below.

How to create a custom number format in Excel

1. Select the cell to be formatted and press Ctrl+1 to open the Format Cells dialog. An alternative way to do is by right-clicking the cell and then going to Format Cells > Number Tab.
2. Under Category, select Custom.
3. Type in the format code into the Type
4. Click OK to save your changes.

Note: In Format Cells dialog you can modify the built-in format codes by selecting the format you want to modify in its own category (i.e. Currency > ($1,234.10)) and then selecting Custom Category. Don’t worry, Excel will not let you delete built-in formats.

Basics

Syntax

The format code has 4 sections separated by semicolons.

POSITIVE; NEGATIVE; ZERO; TEXT

These sections are optional,

• If a code contains only 1 section, the format is applied to all number types — positive, negative and zero.
• If a code contains 2 sections, the first section is used for positive and zero values, while the second section is applied to negative values.
• If a code contains 3 sections, the first is for positive, the second is for negative, and the third is for zero.
• A code only affects text values if all sections exist.

Default format type in Excel is called General. You can type General for sections you don’t want formatted. Make sure you use a minus sign (-) with General if you want to skip negative values.

If you want to completely hide a type, leave it blank after the semicolon. For example; to hide 0 values, General;-General;;General

Placeholders and the Cheat Sheet

Placeholder	Description	Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
General	Default format	1234.567	General	1234.567
#	Placeholder for digits (numbers) and does not add any leading zeroes.	1234.567	#####.####	1234.567
0	Placeholder for digits (numbers) and add any leading zeroes.	1234.567	00000.0000	01234.5670
?	Placeholder for digits (numbers) and add space characters.	1234.567	.	1234.567
.	Placeholder for the decimal place.	1234.567	0.00	1234.57
_	Adds a blank space, to the width of the following character. You can use in combination with parentheses to add left and right indents, _( and _) respectively.	99	_(#_);(#)	99
-25	(25)
58	58
12	12
-71	(71)
36	36
*	Repeats the character after asterisk until the width of the cell is filled.	66	0 *!	66 .
Full Name	@ *_	Full Name ____
%	Convert value to a percentage with % sign	0.12	%	12%
,	Thousands separator	1234.567	#,	1
12345678	#,	12,346
12345678	#,###,	12,346
12345678	#,,	12
E	Scientific notation format. Requires a ‘+’ symbol after, and a digit placeholder before and after.	1234.567	0.00E+00	1.23E+03
/	Represents fractions	1.234	# ##/##	1 11/47
1.234	# 000/000	1 117/500
1.234	##/##	58/47
«»	Text placeholder for multiple characters	1234.567	#,##0 «km/h»	1,235 km/h
Good	«Result is: «@	Result is: Good
	Text placeholder for single character	1234	#.00, K	1.23 K
1234567	#.00,, M	1.23 M
@	Placeholder for text	Bad	«Result is: «@	Result is: Bad
[color]	Change Color of value. Options: [Black], [Green], [White], [Blue], [Magenta], [Yellow], [Cyan], [Red]	1234.567	[Green]#,##0.00_); [Red](#,##0.00); [Blue]0.00_); [Magenta]@	1,234.57
-1234.567	(1,234.57)
0	0.00
This is a text	This is a text

Common Practices

Display and control of the first digit and decimals

Decimal places in the code are indicated with a period (.). Number of zeroes after the period (.) define the number of decimal places. For example,

• 0 — display 1 decimal place
• 00 — display 2 decimal places

If the number has more decimals than the decimal placeholders defined, the number will be rounded to the nearest number of placeholders.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
123.4	0.0	123.4
123.4	0.00	123.40
123.45	0.00	123.45
123.45	0.00	123.46
123.456	0.0	123.5

Alternatively, hash (#) and question mark (?) symbols can be used as decimal places. However, because any missing decimal places will be filled with zeroes, using zeroes instead will be easier to read.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
0.25	0.00	0.25
0.25	#.##	.25
123	0.00	123.0
123	#.	123.00
123	#.##	123.

Add text to numbers

Custom text can be added to the beginning or the end of a value. Text and characters should be added inside quotes («») and backslashes (). You can use backslash () to add single character.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
123.4	0.0 «ft.»	123.4 ft.
123.4	0.00 l	123.40 l
123.45	«Approx.» 0	Approx. 123
123.45	«Result:» 0.00 C	Result: 123.46 C
Bad	«Result is: «@	Result is: Bad

Quotation marks or backslashes are not necessary for spaces ( ) and some special characters.

Symbol	Description
+ and —	Plus and minus signs
( )	Left and right parenthesis
:	Colon
^	Caret
‘	Apostrophe
	Curly brackets
Less-than and greater than signs
=	Equal sign
/	Forward slash
!	Exclamation point
&	Ampersand
Tilde
Space character

Below are some special characters you can use by copying or typing in the numerical code while pressing down Alt button.

Symbol	Code	Description
™	Alt+0153	Trademark
©	Alt+0169	Copyright symbol
°	Alt+0176	Degree symbol
±	Alt+0177	Plus-Minus sign
µ	Alt+0181	Micro sign

Hide value

If you leave any number of sections blank, the value of those sections will be hidden. A section should always be separated (defined) by a semicolon (;). Here are some examples,

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
1	0;;0;	1
-2	0;;0;
0	0;;0;	0
Some text	0;;0;
1	;(0);;@
-2	;(0);;@	(2)
0	;(0);;@
Some text	;(0);;@	Some Text
1	;;;
-2	;;;
0	;;;
Some text	;;;

Replace zeroes with dashes

Zeroes can make data tables look more complicated than they actually are. You can hide them completely by using the previous method, or replace them with any character of your choice. Dash (-) is a common example. All you need to is place a dash into the ‘Zero section’.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
0	General;-General;»-«;General	—
3487	General;-General;»-«;»-«	—
12	#,##0.00;(#,##0.00);»-«;	—

Start with zeroes

If try to enter a ZIP number that starts with 0, the leading zeroes will be removed automatically by Excel. To keep the leading zeros, use zero (0) placeholder for whole numbers.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
10010	00000	10010
3487	00000	03487
12	00000	00012
0	00000	00000
123456	00000	123456

Dealing with thousands, millions, and more

You may have noticed that ‘0.0’ or other simple formats do not separate thousands or millions. Adding a comma into the code will insert commas to separate numbers.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
1234	#,##0	1,234
123456	#,##0	123,456
12345678	#,##0	12,345,678
123456.789	#,##0	123,457
123456.789	#,##0.0	123,456.8

There must be placeholders for numbers smaller than one thousand, otherwise such values will be hidden. This behavior allows us to round and format our value to show only thousands or millions.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
1234	#,	1
123456	#,	123
12345678	#,	12345
12345678	#,,	12
123456	#.0, K	123.5 K
12345678	#.0,, M	12.3 M

Display numbers as phone numbers

Phone numbers can be hard to read without any separators. Custom Number Format Codes is perfect for this job. The hash (#) character should be your best bet to avoid any redundancy of placeholders (0, ?)

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
1234567890	(###) ###-####	(123) 456-7890
12345678900	(###) #### ####	(123) 4567 8900
1234567890	(##) #### ####	(12) 3456 7890

Showing Month and Weekday Names

Date and time values are stored as numbers in Excel. When you enter a date, Excel automatically converts it into a numerical value, and then formats the cell.

Before jumping into the code, let’s review some basics. Formatting code has special placeholders for date and time formatting that behave a bit differently. For example, while m and mm will show month as a number, mmm and mmmm will show as a text string. Below are some examples.

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
4/1/2018	m	4
4/1/2018	mm	04
4/1/2018	mmm	Apr
4/1/2018	mmmm	April
4/1/2018	mmmmm	A
4/1/2018	d	1
4/1/2018	dd	01
4/1/2018	ddd	Sun
4/1/2018	dddd	Sunday
4/1/2018 11:59:31 PM	dddd, mmmm dd, yyyy h:mm AM/PM;@	Sunday, April 01, 2018 11:59 PM

Here is the full list of options for the date 4/1/2018 23:59:31 ,

Format Code	Description	Example (4/1/2018 23:59:31)
yyyy	Displays the year as a four-digit number.	2018
yy	Displays the year as a two-digit number.	18
m	Displays the month as a number without a leading zero.	4
mm	Displays the month with a leading zero.	04
mmm	Displays the month as text, as an abbreviation.	Apr
mmmm	Displays the month as text.	April
mmmmm	Displays the month as a single character	A
d	Displays the day as a number, without a leading zero.	1
dd	Displays the day as a number, with a leading zero.	01
ddd	Displays the day as a day of the week, as an abbreviation.	Sun
dddd	Displays the day as a day of the week, without abbreviation	Sunday
h	Displays the hour without a leading zero.	23
hh	Displays the hour with a leading zero.	23
[h]	Displays elapsed time in hours (to be used when the time value exceeds 24 hours).	1036607
m	Displays the minute without a leading zero.	4
mm	Displays the minute with a leading zero.	04
[m]	Displays elapsed time in minutes (to be used when the time value exceeds 60 minutes).	62196479
s	Displays the second without a leading zero.	31
ss	with a leading zero.	31
[s]	Displays elapsed time in seconds (to be used when the time value exceeds 60 seconds).	3731788771
AM/PM	Converts to 12-hour time. Displays either AM/am/A/a or PM/pm/P/p depending on the time of day.	PM
am/pm	pm
A/P	P
a/p	p

Come in Colors Everywhere

Number Formatting can be used color sections of a code. A common example is using the color red for negative numbers. Color code must be placed inside square brackets (i.e. [color]), and entered at the beginning of a section. Here are some available colors,

• [Black]
• [Blue]
• [Cyan]
• [Green]
• [Magenta]
• [Red]
• [White]
• [Yellow]

Raw Value	Format Code	Formatted Value
1234.567	[Green]#,##0.00_);[Red](#,##0.00);[Blue]0.00);[Magenta]@	1,234.57
-1234.567	(1,234.57)
0	0.00
This is a text	This is a text

Conditions

Although Excel has conditional formatting menu, basic conditions can be applied through code. Condition should be placed inside square brackets (i.e. [condition]) just like colors. Conditions are similar to the conditions in some functions (i.e. SUMIF). First add a logical operator, and then a value. For example, “[>=1000000]” means “if value of cell is greater than or equal to 1,000,000 apply the following format”. Conditions should come before the actual code, again, just like with colors. If you want to a color as well, the color code should come first.

Another important thing to note here is, that section structure changes from Positive, Negative, Zero, Text to First Condition, Second Condition (if exists), if previous conditions are not applied. There should be at least two sections for conditions.

If you enter only one condition code and then save the format, Excel will automatically add the second section with «;General». This means that if the condition is not met, General format will be used.

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