How do I format a cell with numbers, text and hyphens

more details would help
e.g. i have ................... in my cells and i would like to see
......................

cheers
JulieD

"Yaya" <Yaya@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BFA65E7B-807D-4750-9670-34FC3DE78E67@microsoft.com...
>

If you want numbers, text, and hyphens, the cell must be formatted as TEXT.
But you won't be able to do any calculations with the numbers unless you
separate them out and use the value function.