Searching for Leading Apostrophes

Following is the solution I came up with to remove prefix apostrophes while preserving cell formatting (there may be additional formatting that you need to add, but these did the job for me on Excel 365):-

Sub Remove_Prefix_Apostrophe()
'REMOVES PREFIX CHARACTER THAT APPEARS IN FORMULA BAR, BUT IS NOT PART OF THE FORMULA

'ENSURE TRANSITION NAVIGATION KEYS IS OFF
Application.TransitionNavigKeys = False

'FOR EACH CELL IN SELECTION
For Each CCELL In Selection.Cells
'IF PREFIX IS APOSTROPHE
If CCELL.PrefixCharacter = "'" Then
'STORE CURRENT CELL VALUE
CVAL = CCELL.Value

'STORE CURRENT CELL FONT & BORDER FORMATS
CBOLD = CCELL.Font.Bold
CITALIC = CCELL.Font.Italic
CINDENT = CCELL.IndentLevel
CBORTOPWT = CCELL.Borders(xlTop).Weight
CBORTOPSTY = CCELL.Borders(xlTop).LineStyle
CBORBOTWT = CCELL.Borders(xlBottom).Weight
CBORBOTSTY = CCELL.Borders(xlBottom).LineStyle
CBORLEFTWT = CCELL.Borders(xlLeft).Weight
CBORLEFTSTY = CCELL.Borders(xlLeft).LineStyle
CBORRIGHTWT = CCELL.Borders(xlRight).Weight
CBORRIGHTTSTY = CCELL.Borders(xlRight).LineStyle

'CLEAR THE CELL CONTENTS & FORMATTING
CCELL.Clear

'RESTORE THE CELL VALUE (WITHOUT THE APOSTROPHE)
CCELL.Value = CVAL

'RESTORE CELL FONT & BORDER FORMATS
CCELL.Font.Bold = CBOLD
CCELL.Font.Italic = CITALIC
CCELL.IndentLevel = CINDENT
CCELL.Borders(xlTop).Weight = CBORTOPWT
CCELL.Borders(xlTop).LineStyle = CBORTOPSTY
CCELL.Borders(xlBottom).Weight = CBORBOTWT
CCELL.Borders(xlBottom).LineStyle = CBORBOTSTY
CCELL.Borders(xlLeft).Weight = CBORLEFTWT
CCELL.Borders(xlLeft).LineStyle = CBORLEFTSTY
CCELL.Borders(xlRight).Weight = CBORRIGHTWT
CCELL.Borders(xlRight).LineStyle = CBORRIGHTTSTY
End If
Next CCELL

End Sub

Neither the VB code method nor the PasteSpecial method work in Excel in Office 365: The apostrophe prefix remains but cell formatting is lost.
Any solution for 365 that doesn't lose cell formatting?

Mjenkins

Yes you are right, "my" solution doesn't work on text-strings with letters in it, only numbers stored as text.

Andreas H
You are right - it works great for numbers with the leading apostrophe, but it doesn't seem to work for the other example Allen gave i.e. 'a34tp. I had to convert an old company phone directory - all entries stored with a leading apostrophe. This is simple, but worked well for me:

1) Select the column with the data containing leading apostrophes
2) Go to a new area of the worksheet, or new worksheet
3) From the Paste menu, choose Paste Values
4) All apostrophes gone!

It seems as I didn't understand the Task/Question.

The linked picture shows the results of "Find & Replace" applied on cells B1:B9 which, at the beginning, resembled to cells A1:A9.

http://jpg.co.il/download/536b5b5ea60fa.png

Michael (Micky) Avidan
“Microsoft® Answers" - Wiki author & Forums Moderator
“Microsoft®” MVP – Excel (2009-2014)
ISRAEL

MJenkins
I just tested it again in excel 2007, it worked with a charm. ex:

1. write '1111 in a cell
2. select cell or cells
3. select "Text to coloums" in the "Data tools"-set
4. choose delimited
5. press next
6. make sure no boxes is checked (not really important)
7. press finish

The result, the leading ' is gone, and the numbers are recognized as numbers by excel.

Allen's code works provided you've done the following with the code:
Add a new module to your workbook if none exists.

Put the code in the module.
The code could look something like this:

Sub RemovePrefixChars()
Application.TransitionNavigKeys = False
For Each c In Selection
If c.PrefixCharacter = "'" Then
c.Value = c.Value
End If
Next c
Application.TransitionNavigKeys = True
End Sub

The code expects you to select the cells that have the prefix characters before you run it.

This worked in Excel 2010 where I typed some numbers in a cell prefixed with the apostrophe. I copied that cell to a few cells below it, selected them, and then ran the code. I could tell that the code works, because the 'text' was aligned to the left in the cells, and then after the code ran, the numbers were aligned to the right.

Andreas, I couldn't get your tip to work in Excel 2007. Am I missing something?

If you want to clear this leading apostrophe from a coloum, you can use the "text-to-coloum"-tool.
Select the coloum, (or a part of it) choose delimited and uncheck all the "delimitation-options", click finish and you should be good to go!

The macro loop in the ExcelTip is not preserving data when an apostrophe is the leading character. The leading apostrophe is migrated to PrefixCharacter, and the data in the cell is reduced by one character. Although it is possible to use Copy/PasteSpecial,Values and other processes such as TextToColumns and QueryTables to force a condition where PrefixCharacter is a null string and there is a leading apostrophe in the data; doing so is unstable, as pressing F2 or double-clicking the cell will migrate the leading apostrophe to PrefixCharacter. Here is a loop that preserves the data, tested on Excel 2007.

Sub clearPrefixCharacter()
Dim rCell as Range
Application.TransitionNavigKeys = False
For Each rCell In Selection
If rCell.PrefixCharacter = "'" Then
If Left(rCell.Value, 1) <> "'" Then
rCell.Value = rCell.Value
End If
End If
Next rCell
End Sub
I think that Microsoft should provide a rawText format that will not interpret data.

Thanks Lou, that was the answer I was looking for. Dave

Excel 2010 does seem to play by different rules. Once you put a prefix character on a cell, as long as there is a text value in the cell, the prefix character persists. The only luck I've had in getting rid of them is to use the Format Painter to remove the persistent prefix. Select an "uninfected" cell, and paste the format to the desired cell.

The VBA Code to fix cell A2:
Range("AI65000").Copy
Range("A2").PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteFormats, Operation:=xlNone, _
SkipBlanks:=False, Transpose:=False
Application.CutCopyMode = False

I have the same problem with Excel 2010. I would like to thank you for a generally well written article, I feel like I understand it much better now. As someone who has never had VBA training, I would appreciate the lead-in to the code to show what is necessary to run it. [i.e. Dim c as Range, etc...b/c I borrowed that snipet from previously attempted code.] Thanks.

Hi Allen,

Thanks for this great tip, exactly what I was looking for. The Copy/PasteSpecial method works well on all my 3 versions (2003/2007/2010). As does the macro in 2003/2007, but seems to have no effect in xl2010 (which is what I need, of course!). I've checked over everything carefully, even re-installed xl2010, but to no avail. Do you have any suggestions? Possibly an option setting, but haven't discovered it so far. Thank you,

regards,

Dave