Excel Custom Formatting, @ Character

Jun 07, 2015 by azurous in Custom Formatting

If you’ve been reading about custom formatting in Excel you’ve probably stepped on the @ character. So what is it? For input values of the text type the @ character specifies where to put the the text. I will explain this using examples

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Contents

Example 1:

In this example the simple @ sign character is used as the custom formatting:

@

Result:

As you can see the text in the first 2 rows are displayed exactly as they are. The custom formatting only affects the number in row 4. The number is stored as a text value in column B.

For more information about converting numeric value to text values in excel please see:

Excel Function and Formulas, TEXT()

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Example 2:

In this example the custom formatting below is used in column B:

@ "Post"

This custom formatting adds the text “Post” after the value in the cell. Basically the @ sign determines the position to print the value of the cell. In this case the value in the cell is printed in the beginning of the cell and the text value “Post” is printed after it:

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Example 3:

In this example the custom formatting below is used in column B:

"Pre" @ "Post"

This is what the custom formatting does:

Prints the text value “Pre”
Prints a space
The @ sign determines that the value in the cell will be printed at its location
Prints another space
Prints the text value “Post”

Result:

You can download the file for this article below:

@sign.xlsx