Hey guys!

I was wondering if someone can help me. I am trying to parse through two
sets of data in Excel in order to identify certain problems between them.
Problems include additional miscellaneous characters, dashes instead of
zeros, extra zeros in the beginning, etc.

I am writing functions for each case using the VALUE function to originally
identify a data that is a problem because it will return an error when there
is something not right with the string. So, I would check VALUE("00-5220")
which would give an error, hence I know that the data has an issue and can
check from there.

However if I do, VALUE("02-5302"), the result is 1242588 (Which ruins the
whole check I am doing because it will skip it). However, if I add a zero, so
=VALUE("020-5302") the result is an error (Which is what I want).

Can someone explain this to me? I have been playing around with it for a
while now and I cannot figure it out. My observations indicate that if there
is a "0" before the dash, there will be an error as expected. However, any
other number before the dash will return some number.

I greatly appreciate any assistance you could offer.

Thanks,

-Michael