Difference between Text and Number in Excel
Please visit the Data types in Excel lesson before start learning this lesson.
Text and number are two different data types in Excel. Text is mainly used for headings, names, descriptions, titles, comments etc., in an Excel Worksheet.
Text data is aligned to the left-side of an Excel Cell and the numeric data is aligned to the right-side of an Excel Cell. Text data is also used to describe the meaning of numeric data in Excel Worksheets.
If an Excel Cell data has alphabet characters, numeric characters or special characters mixed together, Excel treats the data inside that Cell as text data type.
Excel numeric data type can have numeric characters (0 to 9) in Excel Cell. Apart from numeric characters (0 to 9), following special characters can also be permitted for different purposes.
| Characters allowed in numeric data type | Purpose |
|---|---|
| + | Positive symbol |
| - | Negative symbol |
| () | Negative symbol |
| % | Percentage symbol |
| . | Decimal symbol |
| , | Decimal symbol |
| E | Exponential symbol |
| e | Exponential symbol |
Even if an Excel Cell contains numeric characters along with alphabet characters, Excel treats that data as text. The text data inside that Cell cannot be used for any mathematical formulas. If you try to perform any mathematical operation with text data in an Excel Cell, you may get #VALUE! error as the result.