"How To Excel" Mini-Tutorials by TheExcelAddict.com "Helping Average Spreadsheet Users Become Local Spreadsheet Experts" Creating A Custom Number Format Excel offers many different predefined number formats that you can apply to your data. However, Excel doesn't always have exactly what you need. For example, if you were an automotive parts dealer and your parts are assigned inventory numbers such as 5-656-5987, typing a lot of these part numbers can get very tedious, especially with inserting the dashes. What you need here is a custom number format. Select the range of cells that will contain the part numbers. Choose Format, Cells and click the Number tab. Under Category, select Custom In the Type box type #-###-####. Click OK Now, in one of the cells that you just applied the custom number format to, type 12345678 and Excel will display 1-234-5678. Don't worry about all the funny looking symbols you see in the Custom Number Format dialog box. Just remember that the # symbol is a placeholder for the formatted digits of your number. If you want you number to contain leading zeros for part numbers that aren't 8 digits long (as in this example), use 0s in the custom number format instead of the #s (i.e. 0-000-0000). Then, if you enter a number such as 123 it will display as 0-000-0123. In a future newsletter I will go into more depth explaining Custom Number Formatting. Why not print (CTRL+P) this tip and share it with your friends and associates? Get more time-saving tips just like this one delivered to you by email every week in my FREE newsletter "Spreadsheet Tips From An Excel Addict". Subscribe at the www.TheExcelAddict.com/Newsletter.htm. You'll be amazed how much time you'll save just by learning a few of these tips. Copyright © 2003 All Rights Reserved by Francis Hayes (The Excel Addict)