Thanks everyone for the feedback. Looks like using text formating is the
answer for now.

"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