Converting Text to Numbers

If you are using Excel to grab information from an external source, it is possible that you could end up with some pretty strange information in your cells. For instance, let's say that you have cells that contain numbers such as 1,234.5-. These are formatted as text cells in Excel, and therefore cannot be used in calculations.

The following macro will check the cells in a selected range. If the cells contain text, and that text ends in a minus sign, the macro will move the minus sign to the beginning of the text and stuff it back into the cell. The result is that the cell is converted from a text value to the proper numeric value.

Sub ConvToNum()
    Dim MyText As Variant
    Dim MyRange As Range
    Dim CellCount As Integer

    Set MyRange = ActiveSheet.Range(ActiveWindow.Selection.Address)
    For CellCount = 1 To MyRange.Cells.Count
        MyText = MyRange.Cells(CellCount).Value
        If VarType(MyText) = vbString Then
            MyText = Trim(MyText)
            If Right(MyText, 1) = "-" Then
                MyText = "-" & Left(MyText, Len(MyText) - 1)
                MyRange.Cells(CellCount).Value = MyText
            End If
        End If
    Next CellCount
End Sub