16 digit numbers
 

I am trying to enter a 16 digit credit card number into an excel spreadsheet.
For some reason however excel is truncating the last numerial and replacing
it with a '0'. It displays 15 digit numbers fine. Why is this and how do i
fix it? (ive tried cell formatting but to no avail)

Excel's precision for numbers is 15 significant digits.
You can enter your credit card number as text by either formatting the cell
as text before entering the number or by preceding the number with a ',
which will not show.

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Kind regards,

Niek Otten

Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Jaxz24" wrote in message
...
I am trying to enter a 16 digit credit card number into an excel
spreadsheet.
For some reason however excel is truncating the last numerial and
replacing
it with a '0'. It displays 15 digit numbers fine. Why is this and how do i
fix it? (ive tried cell formatting but to no avail)

If u said this only for typing credit card purpose, not to cummulated I
suggest you change your format cells into "TEXT".
Good Luck..

"Jaxz24" wrote:

I am trying to enter a 16 digit credit card number into an excel spreadsheet.
For some reason however excel is truncating the last numerial and replacing
it with a '0'. It displays 15 digit numbers fine. Why is this and how do i
fix it? (ive tried cell formatting but to no avail)

All 15-digit and most 16-digit integers can be exactly represented in
IEEE double precision. It takes 17 digits to uniquely identify a binary
approximation. Many (most?) IEEE double precision packages display 17
figures to give direct access to the full available precision.
Presumably Excel only displays (and truncates on input to) 15 digits to
avoid questions like "why when I enter 9007199254740993 do I get
9007199254740992 instead?"

1111222233334444 is exactly representable, and can be entered as
=1111222233334440+4
for calculation purposes, but there is no way to get Excel to
numerically display more than 15 digits. However

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...fb95785d1eaff5

gives a limited approach to displaying as text more than 15 digits of
the numeric value in a cell.

Myrna Larson wrote:

The "limit" is set by IEEE, who set the standards for saving double precision
numbers. That's what Excel uses.

If this is a "number" that isn't used in calculations, type an apostrophe (')
before entering it.

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 14:27:42 -0500, pikapika13
wrote:


I think Excel can not handle 16 digit numbers bc it sets a limit.
Besides changing the number to text, is there a way so I can still use
a 16 digit number? For example: I have this number:
1111222233334444. But excel would round it to:
1111222233334440.


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