When you use Paste Special | Values the underlying format of the
destination cells is not changed, so presumably they were set to Text
beforehand. You can either set them to numbers before you do Paste
Special | Values, or you can follow this with Paste Special | Formats
to retain the formatting from the source cells.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Apr 5, 4:58 am, DAM812 wrote:
I have just switched from Excel2000 to Excel2003, and am having a new problem
copying numerical data (derived from formulae in one spreadshhet) into a new
spreadsheet in numerical format. Specifically, when I copy this numerical
data using Paste Special Values in Excel2003, I am getting the numerical data
stored as text (according to the comment box). NOTE: if I simply type a
number into a cell, the numerical format will be correctlly copied using the
Paste Special Value operator. The problem arises only when attempting to
copy formula output, which is NOT indicated by the comment box to be numbers
stored as text - so I assume the the original output is indeed in numerical
format. But why am I unable to simply copy this numerical data to a new
location as numerical data using Paste Special Values (or Values and Number
Format)?

I require the data to be in numerical format so that is can be used in
additional formulae. The comment box offers the opportunity to convert the
text to number, but this will be a very awkward process, given the large
number of linked spreadsheets I am working with. Is there an easy way around
this problem in Excel2003?

Any help would be appreciated