text = number

This one should be easy for all of you excel wizards...but I am having trouble figuring it out. I need to create a cell that has text in it but actually has the value of a number, thus when mulitplied by another cell returns a value.

EXAMPLE: cell A1 has a value of 100 and cell A2 has text "No discount" entered but is equal to 1. Thus when cell "A1" is multplied by cell
"A2". The returned value should equal 100.

"a1" * "no discount" = "a1"


can anyone help?

THANKS!!!