>Anyone know the best way to get:
>
>? VAL("3,000.99")
>
>which returns a numeric 3.00
>
>to return a numeric 3000.99 (or even 3,000.99) ?
>
>I am needing to replace thousands of character numbers found in a character type field to numeric fields.
>
>Thanks in advance...

You will need to strip out all characters except numbers and the period and then use this:
cast("4000.999" as n(13,4))