Converting Text to Values

If you are using Excel to massage data imported from another system, you know that often the data needs quite a bit of work. For instance, you might import information that represents a time value, but the data actually ends up being treated by Excel as a text string.

If you find your data in this condition, all is not lost. If you want to convert the text values into actual time values, there are several ways you can accomplish the task. The first is to follow these steps:

1. Insert a blank column to the right of the data you need to convert.
2. Just to the right of the first cell that has a text-formatted time value, enter the following formula. Make sure you substitute the address of the cell for A1:

=VALUE(A1)

3. Copy the formula down, so that each cell to be converted has the formula to its right.
4. Select the column in which you just put the formulas.
5. Press Ctrl+C. This copies the selected information to the Clipboard.
6. Choose Paste Special from the Edit menu. Excel displays the Paste Special dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.) To display this dialog box in Excel 2007, display the Home tab of the ribbon and click the down-arrow under the Paste tool at the left side of the ribbon. Select Paste Special from the resulting menu.
7. Make sure the Values radio button is selected.
8. Click on OK. All your formulas are replaced with actual values.
9. Format the column using a desired Time format.
10. Delete the original text-formatted time column.

Once you get going with this process, it is pretty quick. Not as quick, however, as the following approach:

1. Select the cells that contain the text-formatted times. If it is an entire column, select the entire column.
2. Choose Text to Columns from the Data menu. (In Excel 2007, select Text to Columns from the Data tab of the ribbon.) Excel launches the Convert Text to Columns Wizard. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Don't worry about any of the settings in the Wizard—your data should be converted just fine with the defaults.
4. Click on Finish.