removing coma decimal seperator from a string variable

Dear all,

I would like to destring string variable, which contains comma as a decimal separator .However, when I do that, STATA creates a number which ignores all the values following comma. Hence If I have a string variable containing observation "123,456" and then apply destring command, STATA creates a new variable which has observation 123 for the particular observation.

When I copy/paste the dataset into excel and remove "comma" as a decimator separator, and then create .dta file from such dataset, STATA does the destring job correctly..

Does anyone know how I can remove comma from the string variables?

Thank you!