The Excel DECIMAL Function

Related Function:

Function Description

The Excel Decimal function converts a text representation of a number in a specified base, into a decimal value.

Note: the Decimal function was only introduced in Excel 2013 and so is not available in earlier versions of Excel.

The syntax of the function is:

DECIMAL( text, radix )

Where the arguments are as follows:

text	-	The text representation of the number that you want to convert (must be less than 256 characters long).
radix	-	The base (radix) of the supplied number (must be an integer ≥ 2 and ≤ 36).

The following spreadsheet shows four examples of the Excel Decimal Function:

Formulas:

Results:

Note that, in the above spreadsheet:

The supplied text arguments are all encased in quotation marks, as is required for Excel text strings;
In cell A5, the supplied text "2000" is not a valid representation of a base 2 number, and so the Decimal function returns the #NUM! error.

For further details and examples of the Excel Decimal function, see the Microsoft Office website.

If you get an error from the Excel Decimal function, this is likely to be one of the following:

Common Errors

#NUM!

Occurs if either:

The supplied radix is < 2 or > 36;
The supplied text argument is not recognised as a number in the specified base (radix).

#VALUE!

Occurs if either: