Ultimately, Excel expects you to enter text, numbers, formulas, or mathematical symbols only into its cells, so you should avoid inserting anything else—including currency symbols.

When you type a seven-or-ten-digit phone number into an Excel cell that uses the phone number format, Excel will automatically change the way the number looks so that it appears as a phone number.

You can follow any one of these methods below to convert numbers stored as text to numbers in Microsoft Excel: Using the Text to column button Using Value function Changing the format Use Paste ...

If the Excel cell format is not changing to a number because the Number formatting is not working, take these steps to fix the issue.

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.