negative numbers in excel 2002 lead to errors

[anon125]

i copied from a website some numbers then pasted them into excel 2002 but multiplying say -333 leads to #value. positive numbers are okay.
here is the file.
any ideas?
thanks for your help

i thought maybe i was doing something wrong when i remove the hyperlinks. so i did it again without removing the hyperlinks

[Gregb11]

The issue is, is that those aren't really numbers. While you have a cell selected of a negative number, click on the drop-down for number formatting and you'll note that all the formats show the same thing. Now select a cell with a positive number in it and click on the drop-down and you'll see it shows different values for different formats. I believe Excel tries its best to interpret what's there so when it sees a $ and a number it assumes it's a number. But I think it has a harder time interpreting the "dash" or negative sign, then the dollar sign, then the number.
Another way you can tell is if you select on the the cells with a positive amount, look in the address bar and it will show just the number (no $ sign). Now select a negative number cell and look in the address bar and it will show the complete text including the - and the $.

[joeu2004]

First, select all of the cells (A1:E215), right-click and click Remove Hyperlinks.

Second, select one cell that appears to have a dash (it isn't!), and copy the dash-like character. Then select all of the cells again, press ctrl+h to open Find and Replace, paste into the Find What field, type a (real) dash into the Replace With field, and press Replace All.

[anon125]

sadly excel 2002 does not have the rightclick remove hyperlink function.
i will have to do them the old way.
will try your - thing
thanks

Success thanks for your help

[joeu2004]

I confirmed that, at least in Excel 2010, simply replacing the dash-like character with a real dash is sufficient to make the cell value numeric.

But at least in Excel 2010, the cell value continues to be a hyperlink, which I think is unwise.

A google search found the following recommendation, which does seem to work.

After the doing the find-and-replace, select all of the cells with hyperlinks, copy them (press ctrl+c), and use paste-special to paste values and numeric formats.

[anon125]

thanks joeu