Hi!

Whenever you use the TEXT functions like Left, Right, Mid, and Substitute to
extract numbers from a string the returned value is always TEXT but you can
manipulate that value into a numeric number by using a simple math
operation.

A1 = 100 lbs.

You want to extract 100 and be able to use it in other calcs:

=LEFT(A1,3)*1

Biff

"Barb" wrote in message
...
I just went through a labourous procedure of transfering data from Notepad
into Excel (PDF documents had previously been converted to Notepad to
extract
text). I used the MID function to extract the specific number I needed
from
all the extranious data from the copy/paste. I now have all this
wonderful
data that I need to tabulate but I realize now it is all text that looks
like
numbers. I cannot perform any math functions and when I try to format the
cells to convert to numbers it does not work.

Please tell me that there is a way to convert this text to real numbers!