Re: [libreoffice-users] CALC convert text to numbers

On Mon, 2013-11-11 at 03:40 +0200, Paul wrote: 
> On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 02:56:51 +0200
> Ady <ady-sf@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > As a simple user, I see this "hidden" addition of the initial single 
> > quotation mark as a _BUG_, and as one of those basic "features" that 
> > work poorly in LibreOffice Calc than in several other spreadsheet 
> > tools. I don't know if this behavior can be "corrected" or improved.
>
> As far as I understand it, the "hidden" initial quotation mark is what
> marks the contents of the cell as text. This is the same in MS Excel,
> IIRC. So basically, this isn't a bug, but intended behaviour, to give
> you a way to specify that a number should be interpreted as text and
> not as a number.
>
> For example, if you enter "0283", the leading zero will always be
> stripped, because it is interpreted as a number and the leading zero is
> superfluous, but if you enter "'0283", then this means you have entered
> a text string and the leading zero is kept. The format of the cell
> doesn't change this behavior, it only changes the *display* of the
> contents, not the interpretation of the contents. At least, as I
> understand it.
>
> Paul
US zip codes (postal codes) may have a leading zero.

Why not set a cell to the formula "=right(len(CELL)-1) which returns the
all the characters except for the first.
-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com


-- 
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted