You can not have th eformat directly in the cell you are entering in. XL does
not have a facility for input masks or formats on text. You can output the
formatted text in a seperate cell with a formulas such as this

=LEFT(A1, 6) & "-" & MID(A1, 7, 2) & "-" & MID(A1, 9, 1) & "-" & MID(A1, 10,
256)
where your input was in cell A1
--
HTH...

Jim Thomlinson


"Hughes" wrote:

I'm trying to format order numbers in excel and I want dashes to fill in
automatically. The problem is I have numbers and text for each order. For
example: SRT46510D1234 is what I want to type in, but I want it to appear as
SRT456-10-D-1234. Is there a way to make that happen?