Web Query extracting phone numbers as formulas

[cdchapman]

Hello,

I have a web query that extracts data to a worksheet. Part of this data contains phone numbers which could be in any international format. What seems to be happening is that if the phone number contains any operator sign (+, - etc), Excel seems to be converting this data to a formula and then displaying the result of the formula rather than the actual data.

For example if the phone number on the website shows as 12-0-10-3-865-865, the data is shown as -1731 rather than 12-0-10-3-865-865. This also seems to happen if there is a '+' at the beginning of the phone number.

Is there an option in web queries to import this data 'as is' rather than converting it to a formula?

 

[VoG]

Try formatting the cells as text prior to running the query.

 

[cdchapman]

VoG

Thanks for the tip, it seems to be working fine now after formatting the whole column containing the web query as text. Funny though, I'm sure I formatted the phone number cell as text before, but it seems the answer was to format the whole column.

Anyway, thanks again for your help - much appreciated.