I'm not sure if this helps, but you could use the TEXT formula to convert all
the cells to text, and then paste the results over the original cells. To
convert a number in cell A1 to text, the formula would be =TEXT(A1,"#") If
your values reside in range A1:D1000 for example, you could paste the above
formula into a neighboring range of the same size, and then "paste special
values" the results over the original range.
Hope that helps.

"mojitsu" wrote:

I would like Excell to treat all of the cells as text even if they contain
numbers, all the time. Is there some way to do this? I am interested in
things like ($67,568) being changed to -$67,568 and things of this nature, I
am using test to columns and it is always trying to change the format, so I
would liek to be able to nit have to click through each column and change its
format back to text. in reality my bigger probelm is I would like to create a
document in which none of the content can be modified only the formatting.
thanks
Ian