I have a raw data worksheet that I populate using the OLEDB Jet
provider. Other worksheets reference the raw data and contain
functions to perform various counts of the data.

One column in the raw data contains both textual values (i.e. "K5")
and numeric values (ie. 11). Because I am using the Jet provider, the
only way I have found to avoid data format errors on import is to pre-
format the column as General or Text. So, the values such as 11 are
actually numbers stored as text (I look in the function bar and see
the value prepended with an apostrophe: '11).

One of the other worksheets references this column in a DCOUNT
function and is looking for a count where this column is not equal to
11. (<11). However it's not filtering out the values of 11 because
they are numbers formatted as text. I have seemingly tried everything
to try and do a string comparison but no luck. <"11", <'11, etc
nothing works.

How can I get this function to work properly on numbers stored as text
without having to change the format of the raw cells to text (doesn't
seem to be an option with columns of mixed types using the Jet
provider)?

Thanks.