Need to start a cell with an apostrophe/single quote

I have a couple columns in a spreadsheet I am working on that require a text ' (single quote/apostrophe) to be the first character in the cell.

I can enter the single quote and can see it when editing the cell but the single quote is not displayed on the screen?

Any ideas? I did some searches on this site but could find nothing regarding this. I assume Excel is treating it as some sort of control character. I changed the column type to text...no help. If I put a space in front of the quote it does work but I would rather not have this space in the cell.

Try typing the apostrophe twice. The first one will set the cell to text and the second one will show up.

Hope this helps!

Use 2 apostrophes, thus '' - the first one will disappear leaving the second one on view in the cell without a space in front.

Thank you...sometimes the answer is so simple it is hard to see...

Originally Posted by ChicagoTRS

I have a couple columns in a spreadsheet I am working on that require a text ' (single quote/apostrophe) to be the first character in the cell.

I can enter the single quote and can see it when editing the cell but the single quote is not displayed on the screen?

Any ideas? I did some searches on this site but could find nothing regarding this. I assume Excel is treating it as some sort of control character. I changed the column type to text...no help. If I put a space in front of the quote it does work but I would rather not have this space in the cell.

Hi I would like your help to understand how you are able to make the ' (single quote/apostrophe) to be the first character in the cell.
I actually need this and dont need it to be seen on the screen, but I dont know how to do it... can you help?