LEFT and RIGHT do indeed return text values, but you can convert them
to numbers in a variety of ways:

=VALUE(LEFT( ... ))
=LEFT( ... )*1
=LEFT( ... )+0
=--LEFT( ... )

so that you can then do further arithmetic on them. (Assumes that the
text is made up only of digits).

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Jul 31, 5:07*pm, DoubleZ wrote:
In Excel 2007, I have entries of the form: 500A+12. *I Would like to get rid
of the A and sum the numbers (i.e. return 512). *I can return 500 and 12
using the left, right, and len functions, but I'm assuming they are being
returned as text because when I sum them I get zero. *Is there another way to
do this? *If there is a formula, please also tell me what it would look like
if there were spaces involved (e.g. 500A + 12). *Thanks