You can custom format the cells to 0000-0000-0000 if they are numbers.

But.......you cannot color separate numbers in a cell unless the numbers are
text and you can't custom format text.

Catch 22

You could use VBA code to achieve what you want.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:26:01 -0700, JICDB
wrote:

I have a project number built of separate codes which I would like to appear
in different colors so that the user will easily be able to identify the
pieces. The project number looks like this 0000-0000-0000 and I wanted the
user to be able to enter 12 numbers without the dashes and have the dashes
entered automatically.

This works fine but is there a way to make the first 4 numbers be red the
middle 4 numbers be blue and the last 4 numbers be black. Is this possible?
My users are not technically savy and anything I can do to help them would be
a benefit.