» Removing Hidden Apostrophes from Imported Numbers

Problem:

Column B contains an imported list of numbers.
All the numbers include a leading apostrophe.
Excel interprets such values as text. They are unable to be formatted as currency, nor can they be used in calculations such as SUM and AVERAGE.
We, therefore, want to remove the apostrophe from each of the values in column B and convert them to normal numbers.

Solution:

Use the VALUE function as shown in the following formula:
=VALUE(B2)