How to Convert Text to Numbers in Excel

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In this Excel video tutorial, we will guide you step by step on how to convert numbers stored as text to numbers. If you've ever had a list of numbers that Excel isn't storing as numbers, then you need to know how to convert text to numbers in Excel.

This happens most frequently when exporting data from other sources. So we start by looking at the common problems that you can come across when importing data in Excel. Then we move on to resolving these problems using formulas within Excel, including converting text to numbers and much more.

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[KnowledgeFeriwala]

Life saving hack. Thank you so much. The multiply option worked for me. Great tips.

[Manoj-fiks]

Thanks, Ashby This is helpful, Would it be possible for you to post a detailed video for Date format changes. Example Dates which comes with a timestamp hidden when exported from an application

[karthikramaswamy]

Really a wonderful set of ideas to convert text to numbers! Thanks, sir! It was very helpful for resolving my issue!!

[CindyLaquidara]

Excellent instruction. Well worth subscribing.

[xvxwvsh]

Hi, Simon, thanks for your powerful knowledge .
I use an Excel file including 20 or more sheets to download from internet, some stock data, like date, open, high, low, close, volume. Problem is Number Stored in Text. I have to convert each sheet into Number. You must have some great ideas to fix it, do you? Any excel formula to convert text into number?

[ksumar]

Great but how can you write a formula if you had thousands of numbers, some were text and others were numbers.
I just want = F2, to a number! and regardless of what is in F2 everything gets converted to proper number!

[raphapam]

This does note solve my issue... I've copied and paste a E-mail table with Numbers, and it shows a Lot of Blanck spaces before the numbers.
the =Trim() doesn't help...

[amitkumarhalder]

i want to know text to convert a number, not number to text. such like that "tax 5%".
pls solve my problem.

[kiokyodora]

My warning drop-down menu doesn't have "convert to number" instead it was replaced by update formula or something (my excel isn't in English and can't seems to change it.) and didn't work as intended when clicked on. I'm new to this program.

[shwetashorts]

Even the paste special method is not working for me, please help!

[hanzalahameen]

I won't able to do, because i've used MID functions

[dilumdilshan]

Why is excel asking to sort my numbers alphabetically? If anyone suffers from this problem, use the "text to columns" option in the "Data tab". This happens especially when we are using datasets exported from devices like GPSs. The coordinates are sometimes stored as strings (within " " marks. Example - "6.1234" ; but excel doesn't show the quotations in it). So when we use those data in excel, it doesn't act as a numbering value so we can't just use text to numbers solutions to convert those data into numbers. With the "text to Column" option we can isolate the numbering part (from "6.1234" to 6.1234). Hope this might save someone's day!!

[wendymcdonald]

The method of multiplying by 1 does not work.

[HYN_Media]

How can you fix a whole sheet that is stored as text though? It would take forever to do this for each cell.

[RonDavidowicz]

At 1:22 you said “Excel is mistakenly storing them as numbers…”, you meant to say “…as text…”

[Accuface]

We all know how to convert each cell to number. The question is how to mass convert a column to numbers?

[elattice]

this is so wrong, it took you a full 5 minutes to get to the solution which is to just to just copy paste. im disliking this video. hope you can improve.