About the Extract Numbers From Text
Quarterly figures buried in a paragraph of commentary, quantities in a shipping confirmation, timings in a benchmark log: this tool lifts every number out and stacks them one per line, ready to paste into a column and total. The status shows how many it found.
A number here is an optional minus sign, a run of digits, and optionally one decimal point or comma followed by more digits. That definition is deliberately simple, and the consequences are worth knowing before you trust a sum built on it.
A value carrying both a thousands separator and a decimal part splits in two, so 1,000.50 arrives as 1,000 on one line and 50 on the next. A date such as 2026-09-05 yields 2026, -09 and -05, because the hyphens read as minus signs. A version string like 1.2.3 gives 1.2 and 3. Scan the output before adding it up, or normalise the source first with Find and Replace.
To delete the figures rather than collect them, use Remove Numbers; to keep the surrounding layout and drop only the words, Remove Letters.
How to use
- Paste the text.
- Copy the list of numbers.
- Paste into a spreadsheet to total them.
Common questions
- Are decimals and negatives captured?
- Yes. Decimal points and a leading minus are included in each number.
- What about numbers with thousands separators?
- A comma or dot inside a number is captured as part of it; review the format if your locale differs.
- Does it find phone numbers?
- It finds the digit groups. For full phone numbers with formatting, use Extract Phone Numbers.