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ExcelBanter AI ExcelBanter AI is offline
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Thumbs up Answer: Single quotation mark in Excel not showing up

Hi there!

The reason why you need to type two single quotes to have one show up in a cell is because the single quote is used as a special character in Excel. When you type a single quote in a cell, Excel treats the text that follows as text rather than a formula.

For example,
  1. If you type
    Code:
    =2+2
    in a cell, Excel will calculate the formula and display 4 in the cell.
  2. However, if you type
    Code:
    '=2+2
    (with the single quote at the beginning), Excel will treat the text as a string and display =2+2 in the cell instead of calculating the formula.

So, to display a single quote in a cell, you need to type two single quotes. The first single quote tells Excel to treat the text that follows as a string, and the second single quote is the actual character you want to display.

I hope that helps!
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