How to Remove Currency Symbols from a List of Prices

A list of prices copied from a website, invoice, or report usually comes with the currency symbol attached - $19.99, €1,234.56, 19.99 £. Before that data can be sorted, summed, or imported anywhere that expects plain numbers, the symbol (and often the thousands separator) needs to go. Doing this with Find & Replace one symbol at a time works but takes several passes if the formatting is inconsistent.

Quick answer

Paste the price list into the Data Cleaner and select the Numbers preset. It strips leading or trailing currency symbols ($, €, £, ¥, and about twenty others), removes thousands separators, and normalises the decimal format to a plain period - all in one pass, whether the symbol appears before or after the number.

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How to do it

Paste your price list into the Data Cleaner. One price per line.
Select the Numbers preset. It bundles currency stripping, thousands-separator removal, and decimal normalisation together.
Copy the cleaned output. Plain numbers, ready to sort, sum, or import.

A list like this:

$19.99
$1,234.56
19.99 £
€1.234,56

becomes:

Symbol before or after the number, both work

Prices are formatted differently depending on the region a list came from - US and UK prices typically lead with the symbol ($19.99), while some European formats put it after the number (19.99 €). The stripping handles either position, and about twenty currency symbols in total (dollar, cent, pound, euro, yen, rupee, won, ruble, and more), so a mixed list from several sources still cleans consistently in one pass.

Thousands separators and decimal formats

Prices over 999 usually have a thousands separator, and different regions disagree on which character means what: US format uses a comma for thousands and a period for the decimal (1,234.56), while much of Europe does the reverse (1.234,56). Both are handled by the same Numbers preset: thousands separators are removed, and the decimal separator is normalised to a period regardless of which convention the source used.

The Excel alternative, for comparison

If the prices are already stored as real numbers in a spreadsheet (not text), changing the cell format to None removes the displayed currency symbol without touching the underlying value - fastest option if you're staying in Excel. If they're stored as text (common after a copy-paste from a web page), a Find & Replace pass per symbol, or a VALUE() formula combined with substitution, gets you there with a couple more steps. Pasting into a cleaner tool gets the same end result without needing to determine which case you're in first.

Need the cleaned numbers sorted too?

See how to sort a list of numbers correctly once the currency symbols are gone.

Read the sorting guide →

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I remove currency symbols from a list of prices?

Paste the list into the Data Cleaner and select the Numbers preset, or enable Strip Currency Symbols individually. Every line has its leading or trailing currency symbol removed in one pass.

Which currency symbols does this handle?

The dollar sign, euro, pound, yen, and about twenty other currency symbols (rupee, won, ruble, real, and more) - whether the symbol appears before the number (like $19.99) or after it (like 19.99 €), it's detected and stripped either way.

What's the Excel way of doing this, and why use a browser tool instead?

Excel's standard options are changing the cell number format to None (Ctrl+1 → Number → remove the currency symbol) if the value is already stored as a real number, or a Find & Replace pass searching for the symbol with nothing in the replace field if it's stored as text. Both work inside a spreadsheet, but for a one-off pasted list - a set of prices copied from a website, an invoice, or a report - pasting into a cleaner tool skips opening Excel at all.

What happens to thousands separators, like the comma in $1,234.56?

Turn on Remove Thousands Separators alongside currency stripping (both are included in the Numbers preset) and 1,234.56 becomes 1234.56 - a plain number with just a decimal point, ready for sorting or a numeric calculation.

My prices use a comma as the decimal separator instead of a period, like 1.234,56 - can this handle that?

Yes. The Fix Decimal Separator option (also part of the Numbers preset) detects the European convention (period as thousands separator, comma as decimal) and converts it to the standard period-decimal format: 1.234,56 becomes 1234.56.

Will this affect text that happens to contain a dollar sign but isn't a price?

The strip only removes a currency symbol when it's at the very start or end of a line (with optional surrounding space) - not one appearing in the middle of other text. A line that's purely a symbol-prefixed or symbol-suffixed number is affected; a sentence mentioning a currency symbol mid-text is not.

Can I clean prices and standardise nulls or blank values at the same time?

Yes - the Numbers preset also replaces common null markers (N/A, none, -) with a blank by default, alongside the currency and decimal fixes, so a full price column export can be cleaned in a single pass rather than several separate steps.

Can I convert the cleaned prices to a different format afterward, like a SQL list?

Yes. Once the prices are plain numbers, paste the result into the List to Format Converter to get them as a SQL IN clause, a JSON array, or any of 21 other formats, with Number Detect keeping them unquoted.