Inserting Commas in a Value Excel Interprets as a Number

Robert has a worksheet that contains a column of area codes. Each cell within the column can contain multiple area codes separated by commas, such as "973,201,732,862." A cell can have anywhere from 1 to 10 area codes in this format. Robert wants to insert a space after each comma, but Excel won't let him because it interprets each cell as containing a large number. He wonders how he can insert the spaces he needs.

The easiest way to do this is to use a formula, such as this:

=SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(A1,"#,##0"), ",", ", ")

The formula converts the value in A1 into a text format that includes commas, and then uses the SUBSTITUTE function to replace all commas with a comma followed by a space.

Understand, though, that this will only work to a point. If Excel is actually converting the area codes into a large number, it won't convert anything over five area codes. So, the following will be treated as a number just fine by Excel and the above formula will work as expected:

973,201,732,862,307

Robert said, though, that a cell could have anywhere from 1 to 10 area codes. If I add the area code 512 to the above number, this is how it would be displayed in Excel:

973,201,732,862,307,000

This has to do with Excel's internal precision which is limited to 15 digits. Five sets of area codes is 15 digits, so they display correctly; six sets is 18 digits, which will not—everything after the fifteenth digit is converted to a 0.

Thus, if Robert is actually seeing a cell that contains 10 area codes, then that cell isn't being interpreted by Excel as a numeric value. Instead, Excel is treating the value as text to begin with, and you can use the following formula to add the spaces:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1, ",", ", ")

No text conversion was necessary, so the SUBSTITUTE function will work by itself just fine.

If you don't know whether the value in A1 will be numeric or text, then you could wrap both formulas into an IF function, in this manner:

=IF(ISTEXT(A1),SUBSTITUTE(A1, ",", ", "),SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(A1,"#,##0"), ",", ", "))

You could rearrange the order of evaluation and make this formula even shorter:

=SUBSTITUTE(IF(ISTEXT(A1),A1,TEXT(A1,"#,000")),",",", ")

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