Sumif on Values stored as text and Criteria need wildcard.

I have a data sheet that was given to me where all numbers are stored as text. I need to sum all instances, of one value, but there are different variations of the matching criteria. So, for example, if I wanted to sum all results for 400044, I would use this formula:

Please Login or Register  to view this content.

However, because all of Column B is formatted as text, the result is 0.
I can get the correct result by physically changing each cell to a number, but due to the way the spreadsheet is set up, I'd have to do that for each and every cell. So if there is some variation of my formula that would ignore the "text" format, and just sum up anyway, that would be awesome.

Column A	Column B	Column C	Column D
Name	Result	Total Of:
330864 : 1 . 6	1148.11	400044	(Formula here in D2)
330864 : 1 . 6	798.71
330864 : 1 . 6	1166.05
330864 : 1 . 6	1821.54
330864 : 1 . 6	579.73
330864 : 1 . 6	220.06
330864 : 2 . 7	1189.29
330864 : 2 . 7	850.62
330864 : 2 . 7	1129.55
330864 : 2 . 7	1863.24
330864 : 2 . 7	569.68
330864 : 2 . 7	253.54
400044 : 1 . 8	1171.75
400044 : 1 . 8	849.91
400044 : 1 . 8	1145.93
400044 : 1 . 8	1940.84
400044 : 1 . 8	584.29
400044 : 1 . 8	172.44
400044 : 2 . 9	1186.25
400044 : 2 . 9	857.92
400044 : 2 . 9	1155.86
400044 : 2 . 9	1943.53
400044 : 2 . 9	587.68
400044 : 2 . 9	175.88

If all the text 'numbers' are in their own column then you can copy a zero value from a cell, select the column of 'numbers' and use Paste Special Add to convert them all to numbers. Then use the SUMIF()

True, that would be shorter. But is there a function that would sum it as is?

That almost worked, but it gave me enough information to finish it off. Thank you.
The finished formula was like this:

=SUMPRODUCT(--(LEFT(A2:A99,LEN(C2))=C2),--B2:B99)

Thanks a bunch!