# Excel: stripping dollar signs in a column? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 27, 2008, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446 "2008-08-27T18:18:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/1 "2008-08-27T18:18:30Z")
I think the title says it all. I have a column of dollar amounts, complete with dollar signs. I’d like to convert them into numerical values. Is there any way to strip the $s? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/2 "2008-08-27T18:25:09Z")
[QUOTE=cornflakes] I think the title says it all. I have a column of dollar amounts, complete with dollar signs. I’d like to convert them into numerical values. Is there any way to strip the $s? [/QUOTE] Do you still want excel to consider them money? Select the columns, right click on one of them and go to “Format Cells” and then change the symbol drop down box from $ to nothing. ETA you can change ‘currency’ to ‘number’ while you’re at it if you want to. ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/3 "2008-08-27T18:49:27Z")
No luck. The numbers are from a banking site, and they originally pasted in as protected. I’ve tried copied and pasted as values only and copying to notepad, but the values still aren’t recognized as numbers. ---
**Author:** ![ashenRiot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/65b543/32.png) [@ashenRiot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashenRiot)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/4 "2008-08-27T19:13:17Z")
This may be too obvious a solution but did you try doing a Find and Replace and replacing all the $ with nothing? ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/5 "2008-08-27T19:19:29Z")
[QUOTE=ashenRiot] This may be too obvious a solution but did you try doing a Find and Replace and replacing all the $ with nothing? [/QUOTE] That’s a good call. Then enter a 1 and Copy/Paste Special-\>Multiply against the column to get them to be numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Risha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@Risha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Risha)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/6 "2008-08-27T20:27:24Z")
I just tried it out, and it looks like the VALUE function works for this. ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/7 "2008-08-28T00:02:00Z")
[QUOTE=cornflakes] No luck. The numbers are from a banking site, and they originally pasted in as protected. I’ve tried copied and pasted as values only and copying to notepad, but the values still aren’t recognized as numbers. [/QUOTE] If you do that, you can then do a Data-Text to Columns and it will reformat them all as number. Or you can use a formula like =int(A2) and it will take the value in cell A2 and format it as a number. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/8 "2008-08-28T02:07:21Z")
Formula in an open column =trim(Left(cell reference, 2)) reformat the column as number or currency ---
**Author:** ![cornflakes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@cornflakes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornflakes)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2008, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-stripping-dollar-signs-in-a-column/461446/9 "2008-08-28T09:27:52Z")
Thanks all. I ran out of time yesterday; I’ll continue later.