#NAME in Excel

muskoka

Err, cant' remember how to fix this..

#NAME intermittently in a vertical column....need to convert to text for example......... '+(texttext)'. I have to have the + and the brackets in the data, but need to get rid of the NAME ....and also
can I use control & highlight to do a load of them in one go??? sorry please

JimmyTheWig

Need more info about what's in the cell that's giving you this and what you want to be there.

danthemoneysavingman

A poss soultion: you need to put an apostrophe in front of the + sign or excel thinks its an equation.

Alternatively, you could try highlighting the column and going to Format Cells, and choosing Text on the Number tab.

HTH

JimmyTheWig

Ah, ok. I see what the problem was, now.
I thought he wanted some sort of formula.

Yes, I'd agree with the apostrophe solution. Annoyingly it would have to be done on each one.
When I try formatting such a cell as text it doesn't have any effect unless I do the format before entering in the text.

muskoka

ya, I tried format & switching to text, but was still trying to input a formalae which worked doing it line by line, but too many to do. Was trying to help a buddy at work and she decided to input different text to keep things simple. Many Thanks though

JimmyTheWig

Only thing I can think of to do it automatically would be to save the spreadsheet as a .csv and use gvim or similar to do a global replace.

rmg1

IF you're trying to concatenate two pieces of text together into one cell, then you need an & not a +.
So, "jhgf"&"ghhj" would give you "jhgfghhj"
You can also change the text for cell references if needed.

JimmyTheWig

That's what I thought he was trying to do at first, rmg1.
He's not.
He's actually wanting the cell to display as
+(texttext)

so it needs to be entered as
'+(texttext)

rmg1

Ah, I see. So the apostrophe will force it to text and everyone's happy.

JimmyTheWig

Yes, everyone's happy other than the user who has already entered in all the cells and doesn't want to change them all manually...

rmg1

A simple piece of VBA will sort that out in seconds.
Do we know what column these items are in?