VALUE vs NUMBERVALUE: parsing text to numbers, and locales
Both turn text that looks like a number into a real number so you can do math. VALUE uses your spreadsheet's locale settings to interpret separators; NUMBERVALUE lets you SPECIFY the decimal and grouping characters explicitly — which is the whole point when you're cleaning data that came from a different region.
The differences at a glance
| VALUE | NUMBERVALUE | |
|---|---|---|
| Separator interpretation | Follows the app's locale settings | You pass the decimal and group separators as arguments |
| "1.234,56" (European) on a US machine | Misreads it (or errors) | NUMBERVALUE(A2,",",".") returns 1234.56 |
| Currency symbols, %, spaces | Handles common ones per locale | Strips grouping chars; % divides by 100 |
| When to reach for it | Quick cleanup of locally-formatted text | Cross-locale imports, fixed known formats |
| Availability | Universal | Excel 2013+, Google Sheets, LibreOffice (verified by execution) |
Which should you use?
- VALUE — The text already matches your machine's locale — the common case for a quick =VALUE(A2) to un-text a number, or letting arithmetic coerce it (A2*1).
- NUMBERVALUE — Imported data uses different separators than your locale (a German CSV's "1.234,56", or thousands-spaces), so you must state the decimal and grouping characters to parse it reliably regardless of machine settings.
Compatibility (Excel for the web, Sheets & LibreOffice executed; desktop Excel per docs)
Both execute correctly in every LibreOffice version we test; Google Sheets matches in our executed run; desktop Excel behavior matches per Microsoft's documentation — we do not run desktop Excel. NUMBERVALUE needs Excel 2013+ but has been in Google Sheets and LibreOffice throughout our tested range. The reverse trip — number to formatted text — is TEXT; and for cleaning stray currency symbols first, see the convert-currency-text-to-a-number recipe. Excel for the web is a separate application with its own calculation engine, and that one we do execute: all 8 corpus cases for these functions matched the documented values there (recalculated on OneDrive, 2026-09-01); the per-case values are on the individual function pages.
Example formulas
| Text to number (local format) | =VALUE(A2) |
| Parse a European-formatted string | =NUMBERVALUE(A2,",",".") |
| Let arithmetic coerce it | =A2*1 |
Full per-version details on each function page: VALUE · NUMBERVALUE.