Navigate to the "Number" group within the "Home" tab in Excel. Click the small arrow beside the "Number Format" box. Click "Text" to convert your cells to text formatting.

Microsoft Excel depends on data that’s stored correctly. If you receive text values that should be real numbers, use one of these methods to get you back to the real work.

Feed it a cell reference or text string, and Excel will handle the rest. Let’s say you're migrating data from a database where names were entered in all caps and want them in a friendlier format.

Numbers that are stored as text in Excel can cause unexpected results. You need to convert numbers stored as text to numbers. ... Then Press Ctrl + 1 button to open a Format Cells dialog box.

The purpose of the Convert Text to columns wizard is to separate the content of one excel cell into separate cells. You can set the delimiters that your data contain and set the column data format.

When this happens, use the DATEVALUE function to convert the text dates to Excel serial numbers. To test this function, enter five dates—as text—in cells A5 through A9.