negative 0 in calculation

[seth]

i have a personal budget spreadsheet that for some reason 2 of 4
calculations is returning a negative 0 value

for example, i have a value of a current bill
then in next row the cell takes the value from previous and adds any charges
and subtracts payments
so for example, c1 has value of $100, a2 has value of $100, b2 is empty
b3 has =c1+a2-b2 and it generates a -0
the cell is red indicating a negative value
if i change the formatting to be in () for negative the cell shows ($0.00)
can't figure out why

 

[Arvi Laanemets]

Hi

What do you see, when you set the format to Numeric with 15 decimal places.

 

[seth]

(0.000000000000014)

Hi

What do you see, when you set the format to Numeric with 15 decimal
places.

 

[JE McGimpsey]

See

http://cpearson.com/excel/rounding.htm

or

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/pennyoff.html

 

[seth]

'precision as displayed' fixed it

See

http://cpearson.com/excel/rounding.htm

or

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/pennyoff.html

 

[Ken Wright]

You took notice of the warning though right? Detail is permanently lost
from all cells past their displayed accuracy. Another way would have been
to simply use a formula such as =ROUND()

 

[JE McGimpsey]

Note that using ROUND() doesn't "fix" things any better than Precision
as displayed unless the problem is structured correctly.

For instance:

A1: =ROUND(1/3,1)
A2: =ROUND(1/3,1)
A3: =ROUND(1/3,1)
A4: =SUM(A1:A3)

will return 0.9, not 1