Excel inserting an apostrophe at the start of a text string

[kyjae]

Hi,

I've noticed that in a certain cell in Excel 2010, if I type in some text into a cell, Excel inserts and apostrophe ' at the beginning of the text in the formua bar but it's not shown in the cell itself. This does not happen to text in other cells - the formula bar shows just the text the same as it appears in the cell.

The cell affected is formatted to General (I've tried formatting it to Text but it makes no difference). The only aspect to this cell is that is has Data Validation applied to pop a message to the user explaining what data should be entered into the cell (it's actually only text needed) but no validation rules are applied - it's just for the pop-up message. Other cells have the same data Validation applied but do not show a ' at the begining of text.

The cell that's affected is subject to IF statement tests and the results coming back are are incorrect due to this ' appearing.

I've scoured though forum posts via Google but cannot find anyone who has experienced this problem before.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Many thanks.

[Richard Buttrey]

Hi,

Copy any blank cell, put the cursor back in the cell with the apostrophe and use Paste Special Add.

[kyjae]

Thank you Richard,
Works perfectly!