I thought that was a great idea but unfortunately I wanted to calculate
variance that have negative numbers. Calculating for instance 1 x -1.04
results =R11*X11.

"William Horton" wrote:

Yes, Excel does do that. I'm not sure why but you do have to re-enter them.
HOWEVER, a shortcut would be to type a 1 in an empty cell. Then highlight
that cell and choose Edit / Copy from the menu path. Then highlight all the
cells that you would like to turn into numbers. Then choose Edit / Paste
Special from the menu path. Then choose the operation Multiply. All your
data should now be converted to numbers. You can delete the 1 that you typed
in the empty cell.

Hope that helps.

Bill Horton

"Peledon" wrote:

How come when I export data to excel and reformat a column to numbers, it
doesn't recognise them as numbers and I have to retype the numbers in a
separate column to calculate them.
HELP PLEASE.