If it turns out that you have spaces (or those non-breaking spaces), David
McRitchie has some code that will help clean this junk up:

http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/join.htm#trimall
(look for "Sub Trimall()")

But after you format the cell as general, try selecting the cell, then hit F2,
then enter.

You have to make a change to the cell for the value to change from text to
number.

scottr wrote:

In excel, I tried to convert numbers to number format, using
format/cells/number from the category list. But it won't take, and stays
text-like. Any ideas?

--

Dave Peterson