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How do I force a column in excel to be stored as text?

How do I force a column in excel to be stored as text?

I have a column of hexadecimal strings:

Asked by: Guest | Views: 375
Total answers/comments: 2
bert [Entry]

"All you need to do for this one is put a single quote in front of your text. This also works for dates you don't want Excel picking up.

eg.

'23446

You can also format your entire column as text which will override the whole column. In Excel 2007, hilight your cells, Right click->Format Cells. Click on text from the options on the left."
bert [Entry]

"The answers already mentioned are sometimes not practical:

Manually prefixing each value is cumbersome and only works for current data.
Adding another column may not be desirable for the final receiver of the ""report"".

Since Excel 2013 (or even before), there is a much better way:

Select the full column.
Click DATA | Text to Columns.
In the dialog, click Next | click Next | choose Text | click Finish."