why use the *1 in Match(right() *1)

[Wilco()]

Bluecell has an excercise and I could not solve it because the *1 was needed to get the right value. I attached the excercise.

The exercise is:
For the chessboard, insert a square reference in the yellow cell (ex. "d4"). Insert two separate formulas in each of the blue squares that will indicate how many cells to the right and how many cells down the square reference is positioned.

The formula (correct answer) is =MATCH(RIGHT(M8;1)*1;E12:E19;0)

But why the *1? All I know i get NA without it.

 

[kchiba]

Hi Wilco,

That is to convert a number in text format to number format

 

[Xiq]

Hi Wilco()

The RIGHT( input ;1)*1 will result in an NA() when the input has a non-number symbol at the end, because it tries to multiply with *1.

If you don't convert it to a number (by means of *1 or other "tricks"), Excel would think it was still a piece of text. This is a problem in any lookup or compare function in Excel (i.g.: MATCH, VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, equals to, etc.).

So 1 (a text) is not equal to 1 (a number) according to Excel.