Is there a way NOT to reduce fractions?

A

atom

I have a formula that divides the numbers in two cells. The result is
displayed as a fraction. How can I keep the numbers from being reduced.
i.e. I DON'T want 5/10 reduced to 1/2; I want it displayed as 5/10.

Thanks
 
J

Jerry W. Lewis

If you want it to be a number, use a custom format of "# ?/10"

If text is OK, prefix by a single quote

Jerry
 
A

atom

Thanks for the quick response! But, 5/10 was just an example. What if the
two cells being divided were 14 and 28, or 12 and 24, or whatever? Is there
a way to automatically keep any two numbers from being reduced?
 
J

Jerry W. Lewis

=A1"/"A2
would give you a text fraction.

If you cannot prespecify the denominator value, then it cannot be done
as a number, since all numeric values are stored as IEEE double
precision floating point numbers, which preserves no information on the
devisor that was used to compute it.

Jerry
 
A

atom

Text fraction is fine. I guess I'm confused about where to enter =A1"/"A2.

Thanks again.
 
R

Ron Rosenfeld

I have a formula that divides the numbers in two cells. The result is
displayed as a fraction. How can I keep the numbers from being reduced.
i.e. I DON'T want 5/10 reduced to 1/2; I want it displayed as 5/10.

Thanks
Click to expand...

You can specify the denominator by using the custom format # ??/10.

If that is not what you want, post back.

Excel actually stores the same number -- in your example it would be storing
0.5 -- so you need some method of telling Excel what you want the denominator
to be. Or some rule that can be translated into a function that Excel can use.
--ron
 
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