Numbers pasted from a website become text in Excel
The table looked fine on the page. In Excel the amounts sit on the left, there's a small green triangle in the corner, and SUM returns 0. Or worse: 1,234 has become 1.234. Here's why, and how to fix it.
Three different problems
| On the page | In Excel | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| $1,250.00 | '$1,250.00 (text) | The currency symbol or a stray space stopped Excel from reading a number |
| 1.250,00 | 1.25 or text | The site uses a comma for decimals, your Excel uses a dot (or the other way round) |
| 10/12/2026 | 10 December | The site writes month/day, your Excel reads day/month |
The first one is easy to spot. The second and third are dangerous, because Excel doesn't complain: it shows a number, just the wrong one.
Fix 1: Convert to Number
If the cells show a green triangle, select the whole column, click the warning icon that appears next to the selection and choose . It works when the text is a clean number in your own format. It doesn't help when there's a currency symbol in the way or the separators are the other way round.
Fix 2: Text to Columns, with the right separators
This is the most reliable fix for amounts written in another country's format.
- Select the column.
- › › Next, untick every delimiter › Next.
- Click and set the Decimal separator and Thousands separator the way the website writes them (for 1.250,00: decimal “,” and thousands “.”).
- Leave the column format on General and click .
In the same last step you can fix dates too: choose and the order the site uses (MDY or DMY).
Fix 3: the NUMBERVALUE formula
When you'd rather not touch the original column, add a new one with:
=NUMBERVALUE(A2, ",", ".")
The second argument is the decimal separator used in the text, the third is the thousands separator. Remove currency symbols first, for example =NUMBERVALUE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"€",""), ",", "."). Then copy the column and paste it back as values.
Fix 4: Find and Replace
For a currency symbol or a non-breaking space that sticks to every value, (Ctrl+H), replace the symbol with nothing, then use Fix 1. Careful with dots and commas: replacing them by hand on a column of mixed values is how 1.5 becomes 15.
Check before you trust a total. After any fix, compare two or three values with the page, including one with decimals and one above a thousand. An amount that's off by a factor of a thousand looks perfectly normal in a column.
Or export it already right
Export Button reads the table in your browser and writes real numbers before the file reaches you. It works out the decimal separator from the whole column, not cell by cell: in a column of “$162,700”, “$86,000” and “$1,250.50” the comma is the thousands separator, and in a column of “1.250,00” and “0,586” it's the decimal one. Currency symbols (€, $, £, R$, zł, ₺…) are removed, dates are read in the order the column uses, and codes with leading zeros stay text.
Numbers that add up, from the first click
Free for one table at a time, no account, and nothing leaves your browser.