It has come to light that the VALUE() function is broken.
The VALUE() function is supposed to extract numbers from a string. It’s designed to be used as a simple filtering tool to remove non-numbers from a field. This is how it is documented on the formula field reference page.
Instead, the VALUE() function does at least 2 completely different things:
The VALUE() function converts certain letters into numbers, and then multiplies those numbers by the closest numbers that it can find! This issue is documented here:
Value Formula Returning Numbers not Found in Cell Formulas
Hi Andrew— I can’t find any documented place that lays out this behavior or why it’s happening, but I did figure out what’s going on. The VALUE() formula seems to be responding to memory units of measurement. It’s actually reading 2020 MAINT TBZ as “2020 times 1TB”, IE 2020 x 1099511627776 (the amount of bytes in one Terabyte) = 2221013488107520. Same thing for INSP 2021 AMB West, which it’s reading as “2021 times 1MB” I discovered it’s reading memory units this way, from kilobytes all the way…
The VALUE() function interprets certain symbols as operators to perform math on all the extracted numbers from a string. This issue is documented here:
Interesting discovery: The VALUE() function performs math Formulas
This is an interesting little discovery regarding the VALUE() function. On the formula field reference page, it makes it seem like VALUE() will simply extract all the numbers from a text string. But this isn’t true under all circumstances. The VALUE() function will sometimes perform mathematical functions as well, if certain symbols are included within the text string! For example, the formula VALUE("**6hxyzb0**00987**") will extract all the numbers and return 6000987. This is expected. But…
We do not know what the complete list of letters & symbols are that cause the VALUE() function to fail, so there is no telling how many different ways this function can fail.
In my opinion, everybody should avoid the VALUE() function. Or at the very least, proceed cautiously when using it.
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