LibreOffice Calc. I want a chart series name to be -12-0 meaning -12 to 0. I type -12-0 in a cell and Calc converts it to -12 (the formula =-12-0).
I type '-12-0 and the cell displays the apostrophe.
How do I get -12-0 displayed in a cell (and thus in the name of a chart series.)
I have Version: 6.4.1.2 (x64)
Place the cell cursor in the intended cell.
Format menu, Cell…, Numbers tab, Category section, select Text and click OK button.
You can then enter what you want in the cell.
Thank you. Was I wrong to assume that the apostrophe should not be displayed as Excel does?
LibreOffice help (7.1) for “Formatting numbers as text” has:
The apostrophe is not visible in the cell, it only indicates that the entry is to be recognized as a text.
I’ve noticed the same issue and simply found the above steps as a way to deal with it.
“Formatting numbers as text”
But “-12-0” is not a number. However the apostrophe will work with “-12”, and “-0” (?) each separately.
Same. Calc doc tels to put an apostrophe first before the number and “it won’t be visible”. But it is visible actually
This used to be messed up for a long time. Version 7.5. fixed it.
The faulty versions did NOT show the apostrophe before numbers IF the entry was interpretable as number.
With an English number format locale
'01234 does not show the apostrophe.
'0,1234 shows the apostrophe because the comma is not a decimal delimiter
'01,234 does not show the apostophe because the entry can be interpreted number 1234 with thousands separator.
The user was urged to know beforehand if his input is numeric or not.
In case of text formatted cells, the apostrophe is treated like any other character.
Oh ok, great! (and thanks for the info).
I’m using Ubuntu 22.04, which has currently v 7.3.7.2.
Actually my input was not a number, it was a date, but I wanted it not formatted.
Libre* improved significantly in recent years 
In this particular case it degraded and now found the right path again.
Spreadsheets don’t have any dates as separate field type. Every date is a day number actually. If your Calc 7.3 shows the entered leading apostrophe, either your cell is text formatted or your input would not be recognized as valid date input anyway. try out.
tdf#149665