How to convert currency text like "$1,234.50" to a number
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Clean imported/pasted money values — strip the symbol and thousands separators so math works.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =VALUE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"$",""),",","")) | Add more SUBSTITUTE layers for other symbols (€, spaces, currency codes). |
| Google Sheets | =VALUE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"$",""),",","")) | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =VALUE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"$",""),",","")) | Identical. |
How it works
The inner SUBSTITUTE removes the $, the outer one removes the thousands commas, and VALUE parses what's left into a real number: "$1,234.50" → 1234.5. Text-numbers are the classic import bug — they sort alphabetically and sum to zero. Watch the locale trap: European-formatted text like "1.234,50" needs the separators swapped the other way. In Sheets, REGEXREPLACE(A2,"[^0-9.]","") clears everything non-numeric in one pass.
Verified, not just documented
We ran =VALUE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"$",""),",","")) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 1234.5 — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned 1234.5 for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.
Functions used
VALUE · SUBSTITUTE — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.
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