VALUE Function – Text to Number – Excel & Google Sheets

This Tutorial demonstrates how to use the Excel VALUE Function in Excel to convert a number stored as text into a number.

VALUE Function Description:

The VALUE Function Converts a number stored as text into a number.

To use the VALUE Excel Worksheet Function, select a cell and type:

(Notice how the formula inputs appear)

VALUE function Syntax and inputs:

=VALUE(text)

text – A string of text. Reference a cell containing text, reference a cell whose formula results in text, or enter text directly into the Value function using parenthesis (example: “string of text”).

How to use the VALUE Function in Excel:

The VALUE function converts a text string that represents a number into a number. The underlined portion is important because it can’t convert “abc” (not a number) into a number.

=VALUE(B2)

As seen above; it could be a whole number, decimal, time (which is stored as a decimal), date (which is stored as a whole number), or numbers with currency. It doesn’t work only for the last item, as “abs” is not a number.

Convert Text Results into Numbers

You might use Text formulas such as CONCATENATE, TRIM, LEFT, MID, RIGHT, etc to produce a result that represents a number. You need to use VALUE to convert it into a number. Otherwise, you cannot sum them up or use it properly in filters and PivotTables.

Without VALUE, you see cell F3 unable to sum the numbers up.

And here’s the formula with VALUE.

VALUE Function in Google Sheets

The VALUE Function works exactly the same in Google Sheets as in Excel:

Additional Notes

Number stored as text can be in any Excel number format <> . This includes numbers, dates, times, exponents, and more.

Return to the List of all Functions in Excel