Excel formatting not working for some cells when trying to do center alignment
I bounced around blogs, forums, etc. and found out that this had something to do with the values being saved as Text vs Number. Eventually I strolled upon a Microsoft article with an alternative solution.
- Select the entire column
- Select the "Data" tab
- Press the "Text to Columns" button under "Data Tools"
- For "Step 1" press "Next"
- For "Step 2" press "Next"
- For "Step 3" select "Text" as the "Column data format" and then press "Finish"
- When you go to check your columns they should all be aligned correctly
In Excel 2016 I found the issue was being caused by an incorrect Style being applied to the cell - none of the other Answers was able to correct this.
By clicking on the cell and selecting a different Style (Home > Styles > 'Normal' for example) the variant formatting was removed and I was able to change the cell format back to its normal state.
The easiest answer that worked for me is as below:
Locate a cell that you think is aligned center (or if you want to align left), copy that cell then select all the rows/columns/cells that you want to fix alignment and then "paste as formating".