why does excel change my numbers?

[Sandy Mann]

Use this big white space to tell us from what to what.

--
HTH

Sandy
In Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland
and the crowning place of kings

(e-mail address removed)
Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk

 

[Gord Dibben]

Best guess based upon the amount of information posted.

Tools>Options>Edit.

Uncheck "fixed decimals"


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[joeu2004]

Subject: why does excel change my numbers?

Without more information (that's why God created the text body), it is
anyone's guess.

If you are trying to enter a number with more than 15 digits, you are
exceeding Excel's data entry limit. It recognizes only the first 15
digits.

If you want to use the number in computation, you are out of luck.

If the number will not be used in computation -- for example, if it is
an identifier (serial number, tax id, etc) -- you can enter the number
as text by prefixing it with an apostrophe (single quote). For
example '12345678901234567890.

Next time, post your question in the text body as well as in the
subject line. And provide a reasonable explanation of the
circumstances.

 

[joeu2004]

PS ....

If you are trying to enter a number with more than 15 digits, you are
exceeding Excel's data entry limit.  It recognizes only the first 15 digits.

I should have said 15 "significant" digits; leading zeros do not
count.

Some other common problems:

1. Be sure that the cell is formatted either General or Number. Click
on Format > Cells > Number.

2. If you are entering "long" numbers and they are changed to numbers
of the form 1.234E+14, change General format to Number with an
appropriate number of decimal places.

3. If the length of your numbers varies widely, you might try
Scientific format with a large number of decimal places. But that
probably does change the appearance of your numbers, unless you are
entering them with scientific notation.

Note that all of these formatting ideas only change the appearance of
the number that you enter, not the true value of the cell.