Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

The negligible little disadvantage is that they (the so-called numbers) are no longer numbers but texts.
You cannot use the cells you formatted the way you described for working formulas, and depending on the formulas you want to use in other cells, references to the '@'-formatted cells may return unwanted (wrong / surprising / dangerous) results.

In short: Don't do it. Spreadsheets are spreadsheets.

ssateneth wrote:Tada, your numbers will no longer be formatted/rounded/whatever and will stay exactly as you entered them.

1. This will (and must) never change any existing values, i.e. existing numbers remain numbers.
2. The newly entered digits will be text consisting of digits.
Text and numbers are not comparable. The formula =123="123" returns False. Any text is not equal to any number.