Your best bet is to enter the data preceded by an apostrophe, as in:
'3256,5623,8965,8754

The apostrophe tells Excel you are entering text, so leave it alone.

Now you don't have to preformat your cells as text, so that when you enter a
formula, it will be accepted as one, and will display the results you are
looking for.

Regards,
Fred.

"Brent" wrote in message
...
I have done this and it works but then I try to add another 4 digit number
using contatenate and the only thing that results in the cell is a
formula.
Do you know how this can be fixed. thanks

"Pimamedic" wrote:

Try entering it as text format the cell to text as opposed to number

"Brent" wrote:

I am trying to enter serial numbers in a cell in the following format:
3256,5623,8965,8754
when I enter the info excel changes it to 325,656,238,965,875