How to delete formula from a cell?

Looks like Numbers is interpreting the serial numbers as really big numbers and using scientific notation.

If you are not doing calculations on the numbers, then I'd suggest before entering the values, format the cells as text.

This is a common issue and answered many times in the forums I think.

Select the cells.
- click and drag selection across a block of cells
- or click on the column or row bar to select entire column or row
- or while a cell is selected, click in upper left corner of table to select entire table

Then at top right of the window, click on the Inspector button to show the Inspector.
Then at the top of the Inspector click on the button that says Cells.
Then choose Text from the pull down menu at the top of the Cells Inspector.

Frank,

One caution here. If you ever accidentally format that serial number column to Automatic or Number, your digits beyond the 15th will be altered - that is, changed to zeros. Only an immediate Undo will bring it back, so I recommend a robust backup/archive scheme so you don't lose your work through some accident that you may not recognize right away.

Any alpha character in the string should prevent this particular vulnerability. For example, you could preface your number with the letter "S" and your problem would go away.

Jerry

Frank,

"2.005F + 23" is not a formula; it is a way to represent very large, and very small, number values. Any such input that consists of all numbers, that most people without knowing that it should be treated some other way would treat as a number, will be treated as a number by Numbers.

If your Cell Format is Automatic, very large or small values will be shown in Scientific Notation. Your example would be: 2.005 times a 1 with 23 zeros after it. If you change the display resolution, you will find more digits after the decimal, but no more than about 13.

Jerry