This often happens with data pasted in from web sites. To coerce the
"text numbers" into numbers, copy an empty cell. Select your text
numbers, then choose Edit/Paste Special, selecting the Values and Add
radio buttons. Click OK. You will probably then need to reformat...


In article ,
"Dan" wrote:

I have a spreadsheet that has a column of dates exported
from a website. The user is trying to add 1 day to the
date and put it in another colunm...

ei: =A1 + 1

This works fine for most of the however, some of the give
the #value error. After playing around with them I
realized that Excel seems to be treating the dates as
strings, when I try to format them as numbers or dates,
they never change. Seems that all the dates between month
1 and Month 4 dont change but all the other dates get
formated correctly. Now the real tricky part comes next.
If I put my cursor in the field (as if I am editing it)
then press enter or 'tab' out Excel seems to then see it
as a date and formats it properly...

ie. Value is 3/16/2005. I enter the field, press tab, and
once focus is gone from that cell it gets formated
correctly.

This isnt really a pressing issue, but I must be missing
something really simple.