Remove the apostrophe in Excel

Solved
dugdi Posted messages 4 Status Membre -  
 dblabla -
Hello everyone,

I'm facing a rather annoying problem, let me explain:

I have an Excel spreadsheet with about 3000 rows and 15 columns. In one of these columns, I absolutely need to change the duration format from hh:mm:ss to [m]:ss.

The problem is that when I originally copied the data, an apostrophe appears as follows:

'00:03:50

So I cannot change the cell format unless I manually remove this apostrophe, which is considerable over 3000 rows.

If I select the entire column and change the format, it will only change the cells that don't have an apostrophe at the beginning (which means none…). If I understand correctly, the apostrophe serves to lock a cell in text format.

Since the find/replace function does not identify the apostrophe as a cell entry, I cannot resolve my problem with this basic operation.

Thank you very much for your help, I'm struggling.. :)
PS: I'm working with Excel 2003
Configuration: Windows XP Microsoft Excel 2003

3 réponses

michel_m Posted messages 18903 Registration date   Status Contributeur Last intervention   3 320
 
Hello

you type 1 in an empty cell
then copy

you select your column with the apostrophes

edit - paste special - multiplication

you may need to return it to the correct time-date format
36
Sophie
 
two years later.... thank you Michel_m !!!!!
0
abcormoran
 
BJR, AS I WAS ALSO LOOKING WITHOUT SUCCESS, DESPITE YOUR SOLUTION, I MADE THE FUNCTION CNUM THAT CONVERTS TEXT TO NUMBER AND IT WORKED FOR I, FO THANK YOU AB.
0
DAmien
 
Awesome!
0
dblabla
 
Super simple! Thank you very much! I had been struggling with this problem for a long time... I wonder why I didn’t search for it earlier, am I silly... :-)
0