Last week I talked about ways to use automatic formatting to convert text to numbers. To do that, you need to have the data coming from outside, somehow – either being typed in, or imported, or pasted in from a… Read moreChanging fixed-format text to numbers

Back when I was first talking about how to do text formatting, I said you could do it all from a single menu/window.  That’s still true of number formatting, but unlike any other kind of formatting, number formatting can be… Read moreChanging text to numbers automatically

Changing text to numbers Sometimes numbers in a spreadsheet aren’t actually numbers. They might look like numbers to you, but to the spreadsheet they’re just a bunch of characters that happen to be numerical digits. This is relevant because you… Read moreChanging text to numbers, and numbers to text (about)

In case you’re not already familiar with the term, Boolean values are true and false. They can also be represented as yes/no, on/off, or 1/0. There’s also Boolean searching, which is based on Boolean logic, but that’s a post all… Read moreBoolean values

Last week I introduced you to the basic concepts involved in formatting numbers, and which programs have which pre-set options. This week I’m going to explain what these options are (and aren’t), and discuss the quirks in how they behave.