If you format the cell using the special telephone number format, the
appearance doesn't change?

If so, the the numbers are being stored as text. You can select the column
and format as general, then do Data=Text to Columns, select delimited and
select comma as the delimiter. This should cause the numbers to be
reevaluated by excel and restored as numbers. Then you can format the
column with the Telephone Number format.

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy

"Alicia Rittenhouse" wrote in
message ...
I have been trying to import phone numbers and date of births from Access
into Excel. When I do this the numbers loose all of their formatting. I
can't even use Excel's formatting to change the way the numbers look. I
figured out how to do it in Word so I know that there has to be a way to
do
this.

What it looks like before I import
(123) 567-8910

When I get it in Excel
12345678910

PLEASE HELP!!!!

Thanks!!!! Alicia Rittenhouse