No. You likely respond to this:
which is wrong. And the very presence of the apostrophe - the visual clue, that tells user “the value contained in the number-formatted cell looks like a number, and if such data was entered anew into the cell, it would be recognized as a number; but it is in fact a string, so we show it to user with this apostrophe” - proves that.
Yes. Then there would not need to be a visual clue that the data is text - the cell is textual anyway.
The apostrophe is not part of the text contained in the cell but only an indicator for the situation that the content is treated as text despite the fact that it could be recognised as numerical.
If allowing RegEx you ‘Search For’ .* (anything) and ‘Replace With’ & (everything found) a new recognition process will be applied with the effect that the content is reciognised as a number and displayed in the chosen (or automatically assigned) format.
If the contents you want recognised are filling a range of a single column you can achieve the result also applying the tool ‘Data’ > ‘Text to Columns…’ (without additional measures).
(There are a lot of threads about the "apostrophe issue"in Calc. Just look for them.)
Also be careful not to use Data▸Text to Columns... if some cells in the range contain formulas (they would be deleted, only the values are retained).
Regards
+1 to @PYS; still, in case of formula, there would not be any apostrophe in the respecting cells’ edit boxes. In my opinion, the Text to Columns is the ultimately correct tool for data conversion (while in case of Find&Replace, the conversion is kind of side effect).
Data > Text to Columns worked fine
Paste complete column in notepad or gedit and the copy back.
In this case, you don’t need an intermediate application; simply paste back as unformatted text (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V).
Yes Possible.
As described by @Lupp, the apostrophe is an indicator that a cell is formatted as numeric/date value, but the contents was textual at the moment of setting the format (which could be converted to a number). In this situation, Calc keeps the contents as text (because formatting of an existing value must not do data conversion), and indicates that by showing the apostrophe in edit box.
The proper tool co convert data in Calc is Data→Text to Columns. One selects (a part of) a column, and starts the tool:
The interface of the tool looks alike CSV import. In the tool, you select the proper type for each column; e.g.,for integers, Standard fits well; if your numbers contain decimal dots (not commas), the proper type is US English; for times, the proper type could be one of dates. Here you may also split texts to several columns using proper separators, and set each resulting column the proper type; or even convert numbers back to text.
The tool is explicitly designed to convert data (as opposed to format data), and I recommend using it wherever one needs such conversion, including “removing the leading apostrophe”, as in this case.
Thank you very much, this is helpful - I did not know such tool existed - it works very well. First set column type and then use the tool on the relevant column. The tool name is a bit cryptic, but that’s fine.
Not every FAQ subject is settled on this level. In this case the text is very clear and helpful. Having known it 1 1/2 years ago, I surely had simply linked it in.
I only created it half a year ago, so nothing you missed 
Try this - first, get rid of the $ with Find and Replace. Then:
This worked for me. It removed the leading ’
Working thanks.
“Search KEY not found”
Make sure Regular expressions is ticked.
You can instead in LO 6 and above, select the column and click Data > Text to columns untick any separators and click OK.
Cheers, Al
It does. Re-evalute a value. Use regex, find all (.*), replace with &, which is the value itself.
I had a similar problem and here is how I solved it.
Problem : '31-Aug-2021 has to be converted to Date 31/08/2021.
Step1 : Insert a column next to the cell where transformation is to be done.
Step2: Format the new cell as Date by Ctrl + 1
Step3: Use Trunc() function. =Trunc(C1,1) here C1 is the cell where '31-Aug-2021 exists.
Step4: Copy and paste special as value.
