The Excel VALUE Function

Excel Text and Numeric Values

Excel stores values as either text or numeric values, so, for example, if you attempt to use the text value "10" in an addition, multiplication, or other numeric operation, you will get an error.

Therefore, if you want to extract a numeric value from a text string, you need to convert this to a number, before Excel will be able to recognise it as a numeric value. The Value function can be used to do this.

Related Function:
NUMBERVALUE

Function Description

The Excel VALUE Function converts a text string into a numeric value.

The syntax of the function is:

VALUE( text )

where the text argument is a text string that can be translated into a number. This may be presented in any of the numeric, date or time formats that are recognised by Excel.


Value Function Examples

The following spreadsheet shows five examples of the Value function, used to convert five different text string representations of numbers into numeric values.

 Formulas:
  A
1 =VALUE( "50" )
2 =VALUE( "1.0E-07" )
3 =VALUE( "5,000" )
4 =VALUE( "20%" )
5 =VALUE( "12:00:00" )
 Results:
  A
1 50
2 0.0000001
3 5000
4 0.2
5 0.5

The examples above show how the Excel Value function successfully interprets the different formats of numbers. For example,


See the Microsoft Office website for further details and examples of the Excel Value function.


Value Function Error

If you get an error from the Excel Value function, this is most likely to be the #VALUE! error:

Common Error
#VALUE! - Occurs if the supplied text argument cannot be interpreted as an Excel numeric value.