How to change Format of a Cell to Text using VBA

calendar_today Asked Nov 25, 2011
thumb_up 55 upvotes
history Updated April 16, 2026

Question posted 2011 · +29 upvotes

I have a “duration” column in an Excel sheet. Its cell format always changes — I want convert the duration from minutes to seconds, but because of the cell formatting it always gives me different answers.

I was thinking that before doing the conversion I could convert that cell format to text so that it will consider that as text value and not try to auto-format it.

Currently I am copying all data into Notepad and then saving it back to the Excel sheet to remove all of the previous format. Is there a way to automate setting a cell’s formatting to text using VBA?

Accepted answer +55 upvotes

To answer your direct question, it is:

Range("A1").NumberFormat = "@"

Or

Cells(1,1).NumberFormat = "@"

However, I suggest making changing the format to what you actually want displayed. This allows you to retain the data type in the cell and easily use cell formulas to manipulate the data.

2 code variants in this answer

  • Variant 1 — 1 lines, starts with Range("A1").NumberFormat = "@"
  • Variant 2 — 1 lines, starts with Cells(1,1).NumberFormat = "@"

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