I've used a leading apostrophe (single quote) in my cells for years as a way
to keep Excel from converting a sequence of characters that look like a
number or a date to a number or a date. But I never really thought very
deeply about what was going on until today.

Here are my new test cases:

If I have a "General" cell with a value of 123, Copy it and then do a Paste
Special | Formats onto another General cell with a value of '456, after the
Paste Special, the target cell now has a value of 456 (i.e., the apostrophe
is gone). Why is this? Is the apostrophe in fact a format? If so, what
kind?

If I have a General cell with a value '123, Copy it and then do a Paste
Special | Formats onto another General cell with a value of '456, after the
Paste Special the target cell still has value of '456. Why does the
apostrophe remain in this case?

Finally, if I have a General cell with a value '123, Copy it and then do a
Paste Special | Formats onto another General cell with a value of 456, after
the Paste Special the target cell still has value of 456. Why doesn't the
apostrophe get copied in this case?

TIA,

josh