🧩 Step 3: Exploring Data Types in Excel (Text, Numbers, Dates)

In this step, we’ll explore one of the most fundamental concepts in Excel:
✅ Data Types — specifically Text, Numbers, and Dates.

Understanding how Excel recognizes and handles different data types is crucial for applying formulas, sorting, filtering, and analysis correctly.

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📘 What is it?
Text refers to any combination of letters, numbers, and symbols not meant for calculation.

🔹 Examples:

📌 Excel Behavior:
Text is left-aligned by default. Formulas treat it as non-numeric unless converted.

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🔢 What is it?
Numbers are used for mathematical operations and calculations in Excel.

🔹 Examples:

📌 Excel Behavior:
Numbers are right-aligned by default. You can format them as currency, percentage, decimal, etc.

✅ Common formats:

🧠 Tip: Avoid adding commas or special characters manually. Use Excel’s formatting tools.

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📅 What is it?
Dates and times are stored as serial numbers but displayed in readable formats.

🔹 Examples:

📌 Excel Behavior:
Dates are actually numbers under the hood! For example:

✅ This lets you subtract dates to calculate durations or apply filters by time periods.

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✔️ Sorting and Filtering depend on correct types
✔️ Formulas like Login to see the code or Login to see the code ignore text
✔️ Date functions (Login to see the code, Login to see the code, etc.) won’t work unless the value is a true date
✔️ Wrong data type = wrong result!

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🧩 Open a blank Excel sheet and type:

“Hello” in A1
12345 in A2
Login to see the code in A3 → Watch it give an error!
🔍 Now change A1 to a number, and see how it behaves differently.

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Understanding data types is the key to:
📊 Accurate calculations
🔍 Meaningful analysis
📅 Working with time-based data
📑 Clean, reliable spreadsheets