Microsoft KB Archive/29999

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{| 2.x 3.00 4.00 4.00a 5.00 | 2.20 2.21 3.00 WINDOWS                 | OS/2
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The information in this article applies to:
 * Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 2.x, 3.0, 4.0, 4.0a, 5.0
 * Microsoft Excel for OS/2, versions 2.2 and 3.0

SUMMARY
After I typed the following formula, I attempted to replace &quot;*1000&quot; with an empty &quot;With&quot; field:

=IF(SUM(M4:M6)<1,NA,M8*1000) Doing this should have changed the formula to the following: =IF(SUM(M4:M6)<1,NA,M8) However, when the replacement formula was executed, Microsoft Excel deleted everything but the last &quot;).&quot;

MORE INFORMATION
Microsoft Excel uses the asterisk (*) as a wildcard character that can take the place of one or more characters in a string.

In the above Replace command, Microsoft Excel correctly interpreted the &quot;*&quot; as one or more characters preceding the &quot;1000&quot;. It replaced these characters with the contents of the &quot;With&quot; field, which in this case was empty.

To have Microsoft Excel interpret the &quot;*&quot; as a regular character in a string instead of as a wildcard character, precede the &quot;*&quot; with a tilde character (~).

The correct form to remove &quot;*1000&quot; from the formula is &quot;~*1000&quot; (without the quotation marks).
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Last reviewed: November 2, 1994

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