thanks biff, I tried it both ways and got the same result. I recognize there
is a strong possibility of user error and being a newby to excel w/o knowing
the root of formula creation creates additional issues. appricate your
thoughts.

"Biff" wrote:

It's all one formula and to be entered as a single line in a single cell.

Either type it in manually or try copying and then pasting into a plain text
editor like Notepad. Place the cursor at the beginning of each line and
backspace so there are no spaces. Kind of hard to explain!

Biff

"ynot" wrote in message
...

thank you for your prompt response as I should have noted I'm a true
rookie
to excel, as I only had the 2.5 minute training and probaly should have
bosted to the dummies for excel..... all values in column "A" = X' Y"; if
I
try to paste formule to B2.... which it won't allow I see MID(text,
start_num,NUM_CHARS) which the paste place
=LEFT(A2,FIND("'",A2)-1)+MID(LEFT(A2,LEN(A2)-1), in A2 and
FIND("'",A2)+1,255)/12 in A3..... did I choke something?

AGAIN thank you for your supportand patience.....
"JE McGimpsey" wrote:

One way:

If all your values have both feet and inches (e.g., 8 feet is 8' 0"):

=LEFT(A2,FIND("'",A2)-1)+MID(LEFT(A2,LEN(A2)-1),
FIND("'",A2)+1,255)/12

will convert the measurement to decimal.

In article ,
"ynot" wrote:

I have a column of measurments ie. 33' 8 1/2" which I need to convert
to
numeric value to compute square footage. all I get as result is error.
A1 =
width, A2: A40 = unique measurments.... D2:D40 = length measurments....
I
need to convert (ft) & (in) to numeric value multiply A$ by D$ = X and
convert? I think excell can do this but I'm to green to figure out?
Any
help is greatly appreciated. Thank you..