Hi Paul,
Maybe i misunderstood the problem.
If the cell contains that message beside the values, obviously the multiply by 1 operation will not change the content. In this case, Find and replace will do the job , of course. I thought that the error message comes from error checking rules , in this case , find and replace will not work, only reformatting the cells will stop those messages, or uncheck that error checking rule in Tools, options-formula-error checking rules.
Maybe achuki will clarify the dilema, i am still not sure which is the case.
I hope i'm wrong
Catalin