Microsoft Excel Tutorial: Why Are SEC Edgar Numbers Showing as Text in Excel?
In this episode of the Learn Excel podcast, MrExcel dives into a common issue when working with numbers copied from the SEC Edgar database. Sometimes, Excel displays these numbers as text, causing frustrating #VALUE! errors during calculations. We’ll take a quick break from Copilot and explore why this happens and how to fix it!
The problem? Non-breaking spaces (character 160) sneak into your data when copying from sources like SEC Edgar. Even though they look like regular spaces, they can cause Excel to treat numeric data as text. And, unfortunately, Excel’s CLEAN function won’t remove these sneaky characters. But don’t worry! MrExcel walks through a simple workaround using Find and Replace with ALT + 0160 to remove the offending characters.
If you caught yesterday’s mind-blowing episode (2652) on using Copilot for financial analysis, you’ll know it’s essential to verify the accuracy of AI-generated data. This issue with text numbers makes that even more important. Copilot may give answers that appear correct but are based on text rather than actual numbers, so always double-check!
In this episode, we’ll cover how to spot the problem, use Excel functions like LEN and CODE to investigate, and finally, how to get those numbers back in working order. With this trick in hand, you’ll be able to avoid errors and streamline your financial analysis process.
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Table of Contents
(0:00) Why are SEC Edgar numbers coming in as text in Excel
(0:20) Apology – offering left-handed Excel mugs now
(0:36) Yesterday’s amazing Financial Statements video
(0:52) Need to Verify anything coming out of an LLM
(1:20) Verifying yesterday’s Copilot results
(1:50) Division in Excel causes #VALUE! error.
(2:00) ISNUMBER function in Excel
(2:10) Checking Status Bar in Excel to see if numeric
(2:33) Getting ASCII code for each character in the cell using MID, SEQUENCE, and CODE
(3:30) Checking ASCII code of a comma
(3:40) Non-Breaking Spaces Character 160 in Excel
(4:10) Why won’t CLEAN function fix character 160?
(4:47) Typing Non-Breaking Space in Excel Find and Replace dialog
(5:00) Typing Alt 0160 and releasing Alt
(5:33) Copilot did Math on Text Numbers Will it still work with numbers?
(6:09) Testing same prompts in Copilot as yesterday
(6:20) Bug in Copilot showing formatting numbers
(6:39) SEC Edgar numbers being text likely have Non-Breaking Spaces
(7:03) Wrap-up
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