THANK YOU BJ,

This solved the problem.

"bj" wrote:

the problem is probably that they are actually text, not numbers
the quickest fix is probably enter 1 in an empty cell copy it.

select all the cells with the telephone numbers and paste special multiply.
they should not be numbers. if not there may be leading or trailing spaces
which wil have to be removed.
helper column with =value(trim(clean(A1)))
if they are now numbers, copy them and paste special values

"nrodADAA" wrote:

Hi, I am highlighting a group of numbers I want converted to phone numbers.
Unless I double click each one, it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong? I
am using OS2k, Excel 2k.

Example:
4017252985
4019446103
8028934982
7325169202
9732292361

I would like to see them like this:
(401) 725-2985

I right click/format cells/special/I choose phone number but nothing happens
in the field.