How to Apply Data Validation to Allow Only Numbers in Excel?

Consider the following scenario: you want to allow only numbers in specific Excel cells. Then it can only be possible by using the data validation in Excel. Is it a very simple process? Just use the formula in the type, which will be explained in the below description.

Read this tutorial to learn how you can apply data validation to allow only numbers in Excel. Here, we will be considering an empty or new Excel sheet and doing our procedure to apply data validation to allow numbers only in cells from A1 to A10.

Applying Data Validation to Allow Only Numbers

Here, we will first select the cells, apply the data validation, and then edit the error message. Let us see a simple process to apply data validation to only allow numbers in Excel.

Step 1

Consider an empty excel sheet, then select the data you want to validate and click on data validation in the excel ribbon; a new pop-up window will appear, as shown in the image below. 

Select "Allow to Customize" in the new pop-up window and enter the formula: =ISNUMBER(A1:A10), then click "Error Alert" to customise the error message displayed.

Step 2

Now click on the error alert, then select style as "Stop," title as "Not allowed," and error message as "please enter only numbers," then click on "ok" as shown in the below image to generate our final output.

Step 3

We successfully added the data validation to only allow numbers in the selected cells.

When we try to enter any value other than a number, an error message will be represented, as shown in the below image.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we used a simple example to demonstrate how you can apply data validation to allow only numbers in Excel to highlight a particular set of data.