As soon as you enter text it is no longer a number and custom formatting no
longer applies. Assuming that you don't need to do any calcualations with
this feild you could try changing the number to Hexadecimal wihch would allow
you Alpha charachters up to "F" but if you need characters after F then you
are hooped...

Hope this helps...

"oboe_joe" wrote:


i'm trying to make a spreadsheet for work and i'm having trouble. most
of the data is pretty standardized, but there are some cases where i
can't figure out how to program the "Format Cells - Custom" to display
both numbers and text.

most of the data looks like 1234-12-123-1234, and i hit the "Format
Cells" to where i can type in the data without the dashes and the cell
would display it with dashes. Here's the kicker...some of our data
needs two letters after the numbers, ie, 1234-12-123-1234AB How do i
program the cells to where all i have to type is the 13 or 15
alphanumeric without dashes and get it to display properly in the
cell?

Codes i've tried under the custom cell format a
####-##-###-####??
####-##-###-####**
####-##-###-####;"";""
####-##-###-####;"@"
####-##-###-####"@"

I guess i need to find out what symbol to use as a variable for text.

Thanks


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