Zero's, Rounding, and Hiding

[Ashley]

Hi All,

I'm creating a spreadsheet that has some time calculations in it. The
problem is that I want to hide all zero values.

Now, I've already got the spreadsheet set to suppress all zeros, and I've
made sure with conditional formatting and some formulas include
'zero-trapping' as well.

Now, for some calculations, the sheet is returning a value of "0.00" but the
REAL value of the calculation is 0.00003333.

I've tried rounding the result, to no avail. I've tried setting the format
to only have two digits, to no avail.

This has been driving me nuts for nearly a week now. Please help!!

Thanks,

Ashley.

 

[David Biddulph]

Which version of Excel are you using?

In Excel 2003 if I have Tools/ Options/ View set not to display zero values,
if I then use =ROUND(A1,2) to round the 0.00003333 to 0.00 it is no longer
displayed.

If you didn't want to round the numbers you could use Conditional Formatting
with "Cell Value is" "between -0.0005 and 0.0005" (or whatever limits you
prefer) to set the font to white.

Without knowing what you've tried, it's difficult for us to tell you why it
didn't work. You need to remember that formatting doesn't change the
contents of the cell (unless you've got "precision as displayed"), but only
affects how it is displayed, whereas functions such as ROUND will affect the
value.

 

[Ron Coderre]

If you have Zero Suppression set (Tools.Options.Zero_Values), then any value
that is rounded to 0 would not be visible.
Example: =ROUND(0.00003333,3) would resolve to 0 and would not be visible.

What formula are you using to round the results?

Note: If you're using a Number Format to round....that only impacts the
display, NOT the value. Zero Suppression reads the value.
--------------------------

Regards,

Ron (XL2003, Win XP)
Microsoft MVP (Excel)