Page 104 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

86 It Takes All Kinds (Of Cell Entries) What’s in a label?
Here’s the deal with text entries:
✦ All data entries beginning with a letter of the alphabet or a punctuation mark are considered text.
✦ All data entries that mix letters (A–Z) and numbers are considered text, even when the entry begins with a number.
✦ Allnumericdataentriesthatcontainpunctuationotherthancommas(,), periods (.), and forward slashes (/) are considered text, even when they begin with a number.
This means that in addition to regular text, such as First Quarter Earnings and John Smith, nonstandard data entries, including C123, 666-45-0034, and 123C, are also considered text entries.
However, a problem exists with numbers that are separated by hyphens (also known as dashes): If the numbers that are separated by dashes corre- spond to a valid date, Excel converts it into a date (which is most definitely a kind of numeric data entry — see the “Dates and times” section in this chapter for details). For example, if you enter 1-2-12 in a cell, Excel thinks that you want to enter the date January 2, 2012, in the cell, and the program automatically converts the entry into a date number (displayed as 1/2/2012 in the cell).
If you want to enter a number as text in a cell, you must preface its first digit with an apostrophe (’). For example, if you’re entering a part number that consists of all numbers, such as 12-30-13, and you don’t want Excel to con- vert it into the date December 30, 2013, you need to preface the entry with an apostrophe by entering into the cell:
‘12-30-13
Likewise, if you want to enter 3/4 in a cell, meaning three out of four rather than the date March 4, you enter
‘3/4
(Note that if you want to designate the fraction, three-fourths, you need to input =3/4, in which case Excel displays the value 0.75 in the cell display.)
When you complete an entry that starts with an apostrophe, the apostrophe is not displayed in the cell. (It does appear, however, on the Formula bar.)