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Why does excel round off numbers greater than 16 digits?
How do I get it to stop doing that?? I've tried all the number formats
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#2
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Why does excel round off numbers greater than 16 digits?
Like most computer apps (COBOL is an exception), Excel uses the IEEE
convention for storing decimal numbers (numbers based on the fact we have 10 fingers) as binary numbers (computer memory has two states: on and off). This results in a limitation on the number of digits that can be stored - 15. But are you working with real numbers? Things like ISBN, telephone, etc numbers re really not numbers in the sense that we never do math on them. In this case you have two workarounds: a) before entering the value format the cell as text OR b) preface the value with single quote (apostrophe) - this will neither display nor print (visible only in the formula bar) To learn more read: What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating Point http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html Go to source http://www.cpearson.com/excel/rounding.htm best wishes -- Bernard V Liengme Microsoft Excel MVP www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme remove caps from email "Dave" wrote in message ... How do I get it to stop doing that?? I've tried all the number formats |
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