You can't obviously make any calculations but if you precede the entry with
an apostrophe ' or format the cell(s) as text before you type it will be
displayed correctly


--


Regards,


Peo Sjoblom


"Aaron Z" wrote in message
...
How do I get it to not change the number? I need it to retain what its
given, unmodified; and as importantly, display it (without having to first
change the cell to text format). It sounds like this isn't possible given
the 15-digit constraint.

Thanks for the quick reply.


"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Excel keeps track of 15 significant digits--no more.

So when you typed in that giant number, excel actually changed it what
you saw.

And when you subtracted 2 from that 123,456,789,123,456,000 number, excel
still
kept track of 15 digits. So it resulted in 123,456,789,123,456,000.



Aaron Z wrote:

If I type in the following number into a field:
123,456,789,123,456,789
and hit enter, I get the following number in the field:
123,456,789,123,456,000

If I then take the second number, subtract 2 from it in another cell,
and
then do an exact function on the 2nd and 3rd (now 2 less than the 2nd),
I get
a "TRUE" result.

I'm using Excel 2003, service pack 2.

--

Dave Peterson