MS Excel shows extra hyphen in cell

I just converted a file from PDF to excel. In each cell, it shows the correct value but when I press on the cell and look at the formula the hyphen is missing. I tried to fix this by adding the hyphen in but it just shows an extra one. How do I fix this? It is messing up all my lookups/merges.

This is without adding a hyphen notice how the Cell still shows 01206-NB but not the formula.

This is when I add a hyphen to the formula the initial one stays and I end up with two.

I have tried copy and paste specials but nothing works.

Edit: When I press format cell

Solution 1:

This answer was strongly polished by Scott Crane. Thanks a lot!

Your data contains the Soft Hyphen (Unicode: 00AD = decimal 173).

How to get rid of it?

Method 1: Search and Replace

• Open Search and Replace
• Click in Find what
• Hold down the Alt key and ender 0173 with the number pad to put the soft hyphen into the box
• Leave "Replace" empty.

Method 2: Formula

=SUBSTITUTE(A16,UNICHAR(173),"")