Purpose
Converts a Roman numerals to an Arabic numerals
Return value
A number (in Arabic numeral)
Syntax
=ARABIC(roman_text)- roman_text - The Roman numeral in text that you want to convert.
How to use
The ARABIC function converts a Roman numeral to a number in Arabic numeral form. The result from ARABIC is a numeric value.
ARABIC takes just one argument, roman_text, which should be a Roman number provided as a text string. For example, the formula below converts "VII" to the number 7:
=ARABIC("VII") // returns 7
Other examples
=ARABIC("L") // returns 50
=ARABIC("C") // returns 100
=ARABIC("M") // returns 1000
=ARABIC("MM")+1 // returns 2001
The ROMAN function performs the opposite conversion:
=ROMAN(2021) // returns "MMXXI"
=ARABIC("MMXXI") // returns 2021
Roman numbers
The table below lists available Roman numbers with their equivalent Arabic number value.
| Symbol | Value |
|---|---|
| I | 1 |
| V | 5 |
| X | 10 |
| L | 50 |
| C | 100 |
| D | 500 |
| M | 1000 |
Notes
- The maximum length of roman_text is 255 characters.
- The ARABIC function performs the opposite conversion as the ROMAN function.
- If roman_text is not recognized as a Roman number, ARABIC returns #VALUE!
- ARABIC can process Roman numbers in upper or lower case.
ARABIC function examples
Sum Roman numbers
The goal in this example is to sum a range of Roman numbers. The challenge is that Roman numbers appear as text in Excel, not numeric values. If you try to use the SUM function to sum a range of Roman numbers directly, the result is zero (0). The solution is to use the ARABIC function to convert...
Related functions
ROMAN Function
The Excel ROMAN function converts a number to a Roman numeral as text. For example, the formula =ROMAN(4) returns IV.
