16 th digit of a number in a cell gets chopped to zero

[srichar]

I am trying to enter a 16 digit number, like a credit
card number, and no matter what kind of formatting I try,
the 16th digit of the nunmber gets reset to zero!
Actually, this happens for the 16th digit and beyond as
well. i.e, the 17th, 18th, etc all get reset to zero no
matter what digit I entered. Which begs the question
whether this is a bug or is there is a upper number limit
that a cell can display? If its the latter, then thats
pretty dumb, since all I wish to do is just display this
number and not run any math operations on it! I tried
formatting it as text, or using a special format, etc..
and none of them worked.
Maybe I am missing something, but this was not a problem
in the pre-2003 versions.

System Config:
WinXP (with all the latest updates)
2003 Office,(with all the latest updates)
512ram
AMD 2400 CPU.

Thanks.

 

[Ken Wright]

Yes it was (Albeit arguable as to whether a problem). You have to enter it as
text, either by formatting the cell first or by preceding the entry with an
apostrophe. Excel maintains 15 digist of precision on numerical data, but with
a credit card number you will not be performing any calculations on it so don't
need it to be stored numerically. This has remained unchanged for at least the
last few releases of Excel.

 

[Carl Brehm]

Set the format of the cell to TEXT.

--
Carl & Linda Brehm
Lake Lafourche Bird House
Hebert, LA
Keets, Tiels, GN Lories, Quakers
Mitred Conures, TAG's, Bourkes
Cages

 

[Gord Dibben]

Excel shows only 15 significant digits.

Precede the number with an apostrophe to make it text.

BTW: previous versions of Excel did have the same problem so your memory is a
bit suspect<g>

Gord Dibben Excel MVP