Excel formatting not working for some cells when trying to do center alignment

I bounced around blogs, forums, etc. and found out that this had something to do with the values being saved as Text vs Number. Eventually I strolled upon a Microsoft article with an alternative solution.

1. Select the entire column
2. Select the "Data" tab
3. Press the "Text to Columns" button under "Data Tools"
4. For "Step 1" press "Next"
5. For "Step 2" press "Next"
6. For "Step 3" select "Text" as the "Column data format" and then press "Finish"
7. When you go to check your columns they should all be aligned correctly