[rudolph82]

I get NUMBERS instead of alphabetic letters for the column labels/headings. How do you change the column labels/headings back to letters. Do I have to do something with the row labels/headings also? I think this happened when I was playing around with templates from the Microsoft.com site.

[VladTheImpaler1990]

Hey there are you using Office 2003 or 2007, but lets help you with 2003 if you have it, when you have excel opened then go to:
* format
* cells
* and then go to text
but if you want only the selected blocks to be text, just highlight them and then do the same steps as above.

[rudolph82]

Hi Vlad. I have Excel 2002. I am not talking about the data in the cells. I am talking about the labels/headings at the top of the column cells. For example the reference to column 1 and row 1 in a formula should be A1, but I have for the column label/heading a number 1 where an A should be. All the column labels/headings are numerical.

[rgreen4]

How ironic. Just the other day I had a discourse with another member of the community who claimed that Excel copied Lotus 1-2-3. Actually, Excel's roots are in Microsoft Multiplan which was a competitor to Visi-Calc the first micro-computer based spreadsheet. Multiplan was renamed Excel when ported to the Mac and then to Windows in the 80's. To this day, the Multiplan Row/Column reference is an option that can be turned on and off. Under this scenario A2B4 becomes R2C1R4C2.
Open Excel, click on Tools and then click on Options. Select the General tab and then on the upper left side should be a box for R1C1 Reference Style. Make sure the box is unchecked and you should be back to the Alpha reference for columns versus numbers. This sequence is actually for Excel 2000, but 2002 should be the same. (The Alpha reference was begun in Visi-Calc and Multiplan the first competitor wanted to use something different and came up with the R1C1 reference).
This option is also available in Excel 2007, but is accessed totally differently.

[rudolphc]

I just got back from working at a tennis tournament and didn't have a chance to use my computer for a few days. But when I logged on and ran Excel, everything was fine without doing anything........ I did what you said to check if R1C1 Reference Style was checked and it wan NOT. Thanks for your reply rgreen4 .