fromatting a cell as a number that contains text and a number

I've seen different macros and code that allow you to add text to a number
formatted cell (such as in the color palette toolbar from jabsoft.com). I
also saw something on exceltip.com. But If you have a bunch of cells
containing numbers and text (i.e. 43ABC, 34B, etc) is there a way to
highlight all of the cells and have them be formatted as a number so that the
text and number will show up in a graph? This would be very helpful.. as I do
many graphs that i end up having to manually enter the letters within the
data labels.