"Ron Rosenfeld" wrote:
One possible issue with some of the other solutions
offered is that trailing zero's are dropped.

Excellent point! We need clarification from Crystal on the requirements.

I interpreted "keep 4 significant figures" to mean change the value. You
are interpreting it to mean simply change the display. To that end, Crystal
could want the Number format with a variable number of significant digits.
And Crystal might want both: change the value and the display.

The latter (variable Number format) is doable, probably more easily in a
UDF, but perhaps feasible in an Excel formula. But I would like to see
Crystal's clarification before going off on further tangents.


----- original message -----

"Ron Rosenfeld" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 19:07:01 -0700, Crystal

wrote:

Here is my dilema: Have a huge spread sheet that takes hours of manual
calculations and turns it into a 5-10min process. However i am in the
process
of validating it but in my eyes its not good enough. In my spreadsheet i
need
to keep 4 significant figures in most of my showing calc's but the input
values change. So for instance, I get .004454, 0.00004436, and 0.0004853.
I
need to keep 4 significant figures at all times. But i cannot use the
round
function the way that excel help has it definded. i can only get it to
keep
"X" amount of digets which is not what i want. Is there anything i can do
to
change this or is it asking to much of excel?

Thanks,
Crystal

One possible issue with some of the other solutions offered is that
trailing
zero's are dropped.

So, for example, 1.2 is expressed as 1.2 and not as 1.200.

One possible solution, which may or may not be acceptable on your
worksheet,
would be to use scientific notation -- just custom format your numbers as

0.000E+00

You would then see:

0.004544 -- 4.544E-03
0.00004436 -- 4.436E-05
0.0004853 -- 4.853E-04
1.2 -- 1.200E+00
--ron