What is the difference between .text, .value, and .value2?

Question

What is the difference between .text, .value, and .value2? Such as when should target.text, target.value, and target.value2 be used?

Answer 1

.Text is the formatted cell's displayed value; .Value is the value of the cell possibly augmented with date or currency indicators; .Value2 is the raw underlying value stripped of any extraneous information.

range("A1") = Date
range("A1").numberformat = "yyyy-mm-dd"
debug.print range("A1").text
debug.print range("A1").value
debug.print range("A1").value2

'results from Immediate window
2018-06-14
6/14/2018 
43265 

range("A1") = "abc"
range("A1").numberformat = "_(_(_(@"
debug.print range("A1").text
debug.print range("A1").value
debug.print range("A1").value2

'results from Immediate window
   abc
abc
abc

range("A1") = 12
range("A1").numberformat = "0 \m\m"
debug.print range("A1").text
debug.print range("A1").value
debug.print range("A1").value2

'results from Immediate window
12 mm
12
12

If you are processing the cell's value then reading the raw .Value2 is marginally faster than .Value or .Text. If you are locating errors then .Text will return something like #N/A as text and can be compared to a string while .Value and .Value2 will choke comparing their returned value to a string. If you have some custom cell formatting applied to your data then .Text may be the better choice when building a report.