Excel Custom Number Formats with Sort
An Excel tutorial by Peter Kalmstrom
In
the demo below Peter Kalmstrom expands the custom number
format information given in the article about
Excel Auto Sums.
When you add a sort to your cells with numerical values,
Excel often starts treating the content of that cell as
text, and you can no longer use the Excel calculation features.
The possibility to tell Excel to calculate is a crucial
feature and the most important reason to use it, but in
some contexts it is also very important to show the sort
of a numerical value.
That is when a custom number format is useful. With a custom
number format you can have both the calculations and the
sort!
These are the steps to create a custom number format with
a sort:
- Select the cells where you want the custom number
format to be applied
- Select Number Formats and then the Custom Category
- Write in or select a number format from the list
- Add the sort within quotation marks. Also add a
space before the sort if you want to have that in the
cells.
- Click OK
To define a custom number format, Peter opens the dialog
box launcher of the Number ribbon group and enters a code
with hash marks (=display if a value), zero (= numbers should
always be displayed) and the value "miles" he wants to add.
Peter uses Excel 2013 for his demo, but the Excel custom
number formats are the same for earlier versions of
Excel.
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