Here is a quick tip to start the week.
Often, we end up with a situation where a bunch of numbers are stored as text.
In such cases, Excel displays a warning indicator at the top-left corner of the cell. If you click on warning symbol next to the cell, Excel shows a menu offering choices to treat the error.
Converting numbers stored as text back to numbers
Tip #1: Error correction
One easy and quick way to convert all the text-numbers to numbers is,
- Select all the cells
- Click on warning indicator next to top-most cell
- Choose Convert to number option
- Done
Tip#2: Paste Special Convert
Sometimes such text-numbers may be scattered across the worksheet, thus making selection of cells a pain.
In such cases, follow this process (see demo below)
- In a blank cell, just type 1
- Copy this blank cell.
- Select all the cells that have text-numbers.
- Press CTRL+ALT+V to launch Paste Special box.
- Choose Multiply from operation area.
- Click ok & Done!
Enjoy your numbers.
Bonus tip: If you think the error indicators are annoying, you can turn them off. Just go to File > Options > Formulas and turn off all the error checking rules you don’t need.
PS: Thanks to Justin for emailing me the Paste Special Multiply with 1 trick.
5 Responses to “Preparing Profit / Loss Pivot Reports [Part 2 of 6]”
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I am not getting sound from the videos. I have checked all the settings and spent several hours searching the Internet to no avail.
Has anyone else had this problem?
Is there anyway to get the Grand Total to be broken out in the same fashion as the items above it? For instance, if you have in column 1, widget a, widget b, and have their sales by month in column 2, I'd like to see the grand total also be by month, for widget a & b combined.
I can't get anything other than a single line for the grand total, rather than the same format as the data above.
Widget A Month Sales
Jan 100
Feb 200
Widget B
Jan 150
Feb 250
Grand total - here I would also like to have Jan, Feb.
Jan 250
Feb 450