Add an apostrophe to the beginning of the first text cell. You will see
'2-604-E53 in the formula bar, but the apostrophe will not appear in the
worksheet. It's a character used to force text formatting on a cell. Use
the format painter to apply this format to the rest of the cells containg
similar data.
Find and replace should then work to remove the dashes...

"DP7" wrote:

I have to remove the dashed from the text that follows. 2-604-E53. My problem
is that when I use find/ replace it converts the text to scientific notation.
I have literally hundreds of lines to remove the dashed from. I have tried
changing the format to text the doing the find/replace & it still converts
the text to scientific notation. If anybody has any ideas it would be much
appreciated.