I receive a request from a client this week wanting a formula to change a column of numeric data to text in order to use VLOOKUP to compare his data to data provided by one of his vendors. He knew that he could enter an apostrophe in the first position of the cell ahead of the data but did not have time to do that for hundreds of cells. Actually this is something I have to do frequently so helping my client out was I already knew how to answer.
Assuming the data to be changed is in Column A and begins in Row 2 insert a column to the right and in Cell B2 enter =TEXT(A1,0). Copy the formula and paste down to the Row of the last populated in Column A. Select the populated cells in Column B, Copy and Paste special into Column A as Values. Remove Column B and you're set to go.
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