Mac Forum / Applications / Excel / December 2006

That's because the dashes make it text rather than just a big number.

May I suggest reading up on how to use Excel?  That way, you will not
find as many frustrations, as you will understand it better.  Of
course, you "expect" it to work as you want when you want, which is
reasonable, but Excel can do far more than you can imagine and *it*
doesn't know whether you want A or B (or C or D or...).

Do you drive a car?  You wouldn't just get in and say "take me to
work".  Nothing would happen.  You have to use a number of controls in
the correct way (accelerator, gears, two different brakes (hand and
foot), steering, and so on) to work, and to a certain extent you need
to know how and why these things work, and of course what they are for.

Take one example.  You wouldn't use the hand brake to perform an
emergency stop, but you *could* in principle use it to slow the car
from speed.  You *could* use engine resistances to slow down.  You
*could* use the pedal brake to slow down.  You *could* use a
combination of these for best effect.  You would understand the
limitations of each and use them appropriately.

Not a perfect analogy I know, but hopefully you can see similarities
with the software that seems to be causing you some distress.  There
are different ways of doing things.  Excel has to do *something*, and
unless you understand it and define the correct things it has to pick
its own choice (the "default" behaviour).

Even after apparently setting things up, you will still need to have an
input.  Using our driving analogy again, at every junction you would
have a chouce of which way to go, and you will need to guide your car
the correct way.  Similarly with Excel there could be times when you
will need to guide the software the way you want it to go.

I hope that this helps.

PhilD

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