I find this ridiculous and a bug. It will really screw up your excel sheet
when you are using CC numbers (which I found the issue with). I'm currently
using the 'quote' workaround but I can't believe a spreadsheet programme
would just do this without warning. Microsoft - BAD DOG!

"Mike One" wrote:

Format a cell as number and set decimal places to 0.

Then enter 1818181818181818 in a cell and hit enter...

Excel then CHANGES to the number to:

1818181818181810 ???? WHAT ???

This can't be right can it ??, what am I missing ?

A credit card number, like a phone number or even a house number, is
not a real number - these are codes or labels. You may do some simple
arithmetic on them like add 1 to a house number and you get the next
one in sequence, but would the number divided by 2 make any sense?

You have 15 digit precision in the mantissa, and can represent numbers
up to 10 E308 and down to 10 E-307 which is a very large range. If you
want 16 digit precision you have to treat the "number" as text.

Pete

I find this ridiculous and a bug.

It is not a bug. A bug is when a program performs contrary to its
specifications. The 15-digit limitation is documented. It is due
to MS using industry-standard double-precision floating point
numbers, as do nearly all computer programs.


--
Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
www.cpearson.com


"Mike One" wrote in message
...
I find this ridiculous and a bug. It will really screw up your
excel sheet
when you are using CC numbers (which I found the issue with).
I'm currently
using the 'quote' workaround but I can't believe a spreadsheet
programme
would just do this without warning. Microsoft - BAD DOG!

"Mike One" wrote:

Format a cell as number and set decimal places to 0.

Then enter 1818181818181818 in a cell and hit enter...

Excel then CHANGES to the number to:

1818181818181810 ???? WHAT ???

This can't be right can it ??, what am I missing ?