Microsoft Excel depends on data that’s stored correctly. If you receive text values that should be real numbers, use one of these methods to get you back to the real work.

Numbers that are stored as text in Excel can cause unexpected results. You need to convert numbers stored as text to numbers. ... Then Press Ctrl + 1 button to open a Format Cells dialog box.

Feed it a cell reference or text string, and Excel will handle the rest. Let’s say you're migrating data from a database ...

Navigate to the "Number" group within the "Home" tab in Excel. Click the small arrow beside the "Number Format" box. Click "Text" to convert your cells to text formatting.

To convert a serial number to a date format, follow the steps below. Select the cell you want to format. On the Home tab in the Number group, click the bottom right arrow.

When this happens, use the DATEVALUE function to convert the text dates to Excel serial numbers. To test this function, enter five dates—as text—in cells A5 through A9.