Excel icon exclamation mark Excel and many other programs use icons to visualize the file extension. If you see an icon with an exclamation mark on it, you may wonder whether the file contains an error or it’s corrupted, but you don’t have to worry, it just means that this is a macro-enabled Excel file.
This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. The exclamation mark means that the workbook is a macro-enabled workbook with extension .xlsm (a standard Excel 2007/2010 workbook cannot contain macros and has extension .xlsx).
This of course begs the query “When do you use exclamations in Excel?”
The only place I use an exclamation point in Excel is when defining a “local name” which applies only to the sheet I’m working with, but is not known outside that sheet without identifying the specific sheet containing that range (in other words on other sheets in the same workbook).
It is true that most of the time, when entering a formula into a spreadsheet the exclamation mark (!) serves as a separator between an (optional) book and sheet name and the formula, as shown here: =[Book1]Sheet1! $A$1 However, you can also enter an exclamation mark in front.
This of course begs the inquiry “What does the symbol ^ mean in Excel?”
The carat (^) symbol is a math operator used to indicate an exponent. Say that you want to raise 4 to the 3rd power. A formula of =4^3 will calculate =4*4*4 or 64. As another example =3^10 will be =3*3*3*3*3*3*3*3*3*3 or 59049.
Why does excel add quotation marks?
Microsoft Excel uses double quotation marks to signify text within formulas. When it sees these marks, it uses the text and discards the quotes. Typing quotation marks directly into a cell is not an issue because Excel automatically recognizes that you are entering text and therefore keeps the quotation marks.
Does Excel add quotes to strings?
I found that Excel adds the quotes only to strings containing the non-printable characters 10 (line feed), 13 (carriage return) and 9 (tab). All other non-printable characters, such as 12 (form feed) or 30 (record separator) do NOT cause Excel to add quotes.
When you add text in a formula in Excel, you have to enclose the text with quotation marks (”…”). This is useful for when you want to create a dynamic string that changes based on some conditions.
One more inquiry we ran across in our research was “How to add front quote in Excel after last character?”.
After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below: 1. In the Add Text dialog, type “ into the Text box, then check Before first character option. Click Apply to add front quote into cells. Then type ” into the Text box, check After last character option.
Why does excel add an apostrophe?
Leading apostrophe forces excel to treat the cell’s contents as a text value. So, even if the cell contains a number or date, Excel will treat it as text.
Another common inquiry is “Why is there an apostrophe in my cell contents?”.
The problem is that the presence of the apostrophe simply means that the content of your cells is Text. So, you can use text to column option located under the “DATA” menu.
You might be wondering “How do you put apostrophes in front of numbers in Excel?”
One source claimed insert / Add apostrophe in front of numbers with Add Text of Kutools for Excel. Insert or add leading apostrophe in front of numbers: With Kutools for Excel’s Convert between Text and Number feature, you can quickly insert or remove leading apostrophe from the front of numbers as you need.
Why are there two quotation marks around the entire text?
If you notice, the entire text is surrounded by quotation marks. This tells the formula that everything inside those surrounding quotation marks is text. When Excel runs into the two quotation marks together, it processes it as a single quotation mark in the result. Wow, you read the wholearticle!