Take a look at Chip Pearson's discussion why this happens:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/rounding.htm
And look at J.E. McGimpsey's workarounds:
http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/pennyoff.html
ashlandpmac wrote:
I am having a problem summing a column of numbers. These numbers are both
negative and positive numbers. When I sum the numbers it comes to zero.
This is correct, but when I reformat and take out a 30 decimal places I
suddenly start getting numbers starting at about the 12th decimal place.
These numbers are dollar amounts. I know they don't go beyond 2 decimal
places. I've hand entered them. When I take all of the numbers out 30
decimal places, nothing shows up. It only does it on the sum.
I tried summing only the negative numbers and postive numbers separately it
works then, but I can do it this way for what I need to do.
I've tried a bunch of things.
Thanks
Bill
--
Dave Peterson