Changing the cell format does not change the cell value (in particular,
if value was text before, it will still be text after). Changing the
cell format does prepare the cell to receive a number however, so you
could re-enter the data, and it would then be interpreted as a number.
Alternately, as your helpdesk knew, math operators will coerce text into
numbers; thus
=5+"3"
will return 8.

As to why the numbers were text to begin with, there are many
possibilities. The cells may have been formatted as text before the
"numbers" were entered. The "numbers" may have been entered with a
leading single quote. The "numbers" may have been copied from another
workbook, where they were text. The numbers may have been exported from
a database using Crystal Report or similar tools. ...

Jerry

robbinma wrote:

Thanks.

I tried doing the reformatting but it still had the problem.
The solution (from my local helpdesk) was to enter a 1 in a seperate
cell and then do paste special-Multiply to reset the values.

Still no idea about what caused the problem in the first place.

Regards,

Mark