Numbers entry

[Aless]

In Excel 2003, under Options>Edit>Fixed Decimal Places is set at 2. If I
enter 500. in a cell this appears as 5.00; it is necessary to enter either
500.0 or 50000 to get 500.00

In earlier versions of Excel it was only necessary to enter a number
followed by decimal point to get the whole number in the cell.

Is there a way to make Excel 2003 behave the same as the earlier versions?

 

[Frank abel]

Hi
goto 'Tools - Options - Edit' and uncheck 'Fixed decimals'

 

[Harald Staff]

Just un-select the "Fixed decimals" box (Tools > Options menu)

HTH. Best wishes Harald

 

[Aless]

Hmmm, this is fine but I want to retain the Fixed Decimal Places as the
majority of numbers I enter are not whole numbers and I do not want to keep
putting in decimal point.

I was able to do this in Excel XP - to enter a whole number all I had to do
was put in a decimal point after the number but in 2003 this does not work.

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi
yes this is something MS has changed in Excel 2003. So no
way around it

 

[Harald Staff]

I was able to do this in Excel XP - to enter a whole number all I had to do
was put in a decimal point after the number but in 2003 this does not

work.

That was a neat trick, I never saw that one. The behavior is the same on my
system, no good in 2003. I believe you spotted a bug or something, which
maybe means Very Interesting and Not Much To Do About. Thanks for the
knowledge and apologies for misunderstanding your initial posting.

Best wishes Harald

 

[Gord Dibben]

Aless

It is a new "feature" in Excel 2003. I'm guessing someone missed in Dev
missed this.

Workaround if you wish to keep fixed decimals enable is to enter the number
then a decimal point then a 0

i.e. 500.0 will return 500

500 will return 5.00 with FD set to 2

Gord Dibben Excel MVP