How to Separate Text From Numbers in Excel. When you open a raw data file in Excel, the program doesn't always recognize the way in which the data is formatted, such as comma-delimited, tab ...

Why is my number stored as text in Excel? Excel doesn’t convert numbers written in text into digits if you import data from another source because of the default setting.

Excel filters help you find exactly what you want, no matter how big your spreadsheet database is. Here's how to set number, text and data filters.

If you store Social Security numbers for data purposes, you probably don't care about these individual strings, so you can safely remove the hyphens.