Thread: Format Question
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Joe User[_2_] Joe User[_2_] is offline
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Default Format Question

"SITCFanTN" wrote:
I have an Excel Spreadsheet and the data is
in General format and displays with one decimal
and with the percent sign like this: 85.1% or 96.3%.
I need to use this data in calculations so I need
it to be a number format as 85.1 or 96.3...with no
percent sign. I can I accomplish this.


How do you accomplish this manually?

Your description is subject to interprertation. Explaining your manual
process might help to resolve the ambiguities.

If you enter literally 10% into a cell that is formatted General, Excel will
automagically change the format to Percentage. The value in the cell is
actually 0.1. It can be used directly in other calculations; the appearance
of "%" has no adverse impact. In fact, this is the best form because the
calculation can be of the form A1*C1 instead of A1*C1/100, where C1 contains
the percentage.

If you are saying that the cell format is still General after entering the
value, and the value appears as "10%", I would guess that you actually have
the text string "10%". That may or may not cause computational difficulties
in other formulas, depending on those formulas.


I have hundreds of rows of data that I need reformated in this way.


Assuming the latter (cell with text that is formatted General), one way to
rectify this for "hundreds of rows of data" is:

1. Put the number 1 into some cell, and copy it.

2. Select the cells to be changed, right-click, and click Paste Special
Multiply OK.

3. While those cells are still selected, right-click, and click Format
Number Percentage.

That converts the numeric string into a number formatted as Percentage.

If the cells contents are already numbers formatted as Percentage, and you
wish them to scale them by 100 and remove "%" (not recommended), the
procedure is similar. In Step 1, use 100 instead of 1. In Step 3, click
Format Number Number or General instead of Percentage.

Those procedures are tentative, subject to your clarification of the
situation.


----- original message -----

"SITCFanTN" wrote:
I feel silly asking this because I know it should be easy, but I just can't
figure this out. I have an Excel Spreadsheet and the data is in General
format and displays with one decimal and with the percent sign like this:
85.1% or 96.3%. I need to use this data in calculations so I need it to be a
number format as 85.1 or 96.3...with no percent sign. I can I accomplish
this. I have hundreds of rows of data that I need reformated in this way.
Thanks for your help.