Or you could Format/Cells/Custom and use '@ as your custom cell format...

beege


"Beege" wrote in message
. ..
Penni,
Format/Cells/Text
The single apostrophe tells excel its really text and not a number, and if
you simply format the cells as text, you don't need the apostrophe.

HTH
Beege



"Penni Lee" <Penni wrote in message
...
I'm trying to set up a spreadsheet for data entry, the entry will always
be
numbers but I want the numbers to start with an '. Would like to set it
up so
that it appears automatic. The ' does not need to show it just needs to
be
there for uploading purposes. When we type them in by hand they dissapear
when we download them and we end up having to put them back in manually.