We know that it will truncate every digit after 15th to a zero, that is
what Paul was saying to you. You need to format as text before you type in
the numbers, it will not work on existing entries without editing the cell
by selecting it and pressing F2 enter but of course it will not change back
the zeros to what you originally typed. If you are just storing numbers like
serial numbers or credit cards you can either precede each entry with an
apostrophe (not visible in the cell) or preformat as text. Then type in the
numbers. If you want to calculate these kind of numbers (which I am pretty
sure you don't want to do) then you can't use Excel, there might be third
part commercial add-ins but it is probably better to get more advanced
software like Mathematica which is a mere 2500 dollars or something like
that


--
Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

"chippo" wrote in message
...
Have tried to make the entry a FORMULA by placing an equals = sign before
the
entry, and that did not work. Then I formatted the column for text format
and it places it in exponential format. Not good. that it would work.
No
matter how you put the numer (i.e. as a text entry or as a formula) when
you
get to the 16th digit, it reverts to a 0.

Try this: 12345678910123456

and you will see that the final 6 becomes a 0

Even if you place additional numbers they all show, but revert to 0s for
example
1234567890123456789 will becomne 1234567890123450000 !

The only way I could get it to work is by placing " in front of the
numbers
(the other form of text entry). e.g. "1234567890123456789 This works,
but
is really not all that satisfactory.

Surely Excell 2007 must have space for more than 16 digits!!! Can they
really be serious? They have expanded capacity in other significant
ways,
so why not this?

Maybe I am doing somethign wrong ? ? ?

Tx Chippo

"paul" wrote:

15 is the limit for excel to display properly AFAIK...format as text and
you
will be right
--
paul

remove nospam for email addy!



"chippo" wrote:

Hi,

I was keeping track of my credit card numbers with a spreadsheet. And
when
I enter a cc numer such as a visa card the last digit gets rounded to a
"0"
No matter what I tried this happened. But it doesn't happen in Excel
2003!

I checked to be sure I was using a correct format (number entry in the
cell
and column I was in). I even tried chnaging the format to currency,
etc, but
nothing would work. The last digit no matter what I enter gets changed
to a
zero.

This seems to happen beginning with the 16th number and actually
continues
if you enter more than 15 numbers (i.e. 16 numbers, 17 numbers, etc.)

Try it ! Any ideas.
Tx Chippo