Formatting and data|validation won't do anything to the existing values.

You could use a formula in another cell like:
=left(a1,12)
to grab the leftmost 12 characters.

greatdeals_007 wrote:

I am using a program that limits the number of characters in a product model
number to 12 characters. my file currently contains may line items with
model numbers that exceed this limit.

how do I format the column to shorten the number of characters? I have
tried using the data validation but it did nothing for me. can you help?

--

Dave Peterson