Leading apostrophes - not printed - but why are they there, and you can't delete them?

A cell is formatted as General (but you can see it in a cell formatted as Text, also) . . . there is a leading apostrophe.

If I copy and paste the cell above it, that doesn't have this, then put the data in that cell, I can get rid of the apostrophe.

I understand how if the data starts with a dash, like a 4-digit credit card number might (ie. -1234), you need to have an apostrophe preceding it (ie. '-1234), otherwise, you get an error.

If I create a column to the right, and then copy and past "values," it carries over the non-printing apostrophe. Why?

Any idea why it does this, or how to control them to begin with?

Good evening slack7639

Excel only deals with numbers up to 15 digits long - not good if you want to use a 16 digit credit card number.
The answer is to allow long number strings to be shown and not truncated into scientific number format - hence the leading apostrophe. It tells Excel that the number is a long string, not a value.

That's all.

HTH

DominicB

Not sure . . . but, I figured it out:

Put cursor on the cell, or highlight the whole column, then . . . Home tab / Editing / Clear - Clear formats . . . you will then have to put the font back to what you want

This also works to "Clear Hyperlinks"