Formats don't change the underlying values. Formatting affects only the
display of those values.

You can normally convert text to numbers by doing arithmetic on them like
adding zero. So try this.
Enter 0 in an unused cell.
Copy that cell.
Highlight your zip codes.
Right click on the range, choose Paste Special...Add

Now your text should be numbers.

Regards,
Fred.

"SS" wrote in message
...
I have selected a column, choose Format, Cells, Special, Zip Code, but some
of the cells continue to show up in error checking as "text". The
spreadsheet is thousands of rows long, and I do not want to have to go
through every single error to change text to number or zip. Why is the
formatting not changing all cells? (I am copying & pasting the rows that
have name/address/zip from another Excel spreadsheet I have - but I have
changed the formatting on the zip code column to zip code in that
spreadsheet
as well to no avail).