Remove the apostrophe in Excel

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dugdi Posted messages 4 Status Member -  
 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 answers

  1. michel_m Posted messages 18903 Registration date   Status Contributor 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
    1. Sophie
       
      two years later.... thank you Michel_m !!!!!
      0
    2. 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
    3. DAmien
       
      Awesome!
      0
    4. 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