That means that you've got text, not numbers.

There are probably spaces or other non-printing characters in the cells with
your numbers.
Try copying an empty cell, then celling your range of "numbers", and then
using Edit/ Paste Special/ Add. If you are lucky, that wil change your text
to real numbers. If not, you'll have to find out what spurious characters
you've got in the cells with your numbers, and get rid of them.
--
David Biddulph

"clivert" wrote in message
...
I copied a range of numbers into excel from the internet. When I try to
'Autosum' them they will not add. I also cannot format them e.g can't
change
them to a currency or change the number of decimal places of any number in
a
cell.