Odd number conversions???

[Guest]

I've come across an interesting issue in Excel 2000 in which if I enter the
following number (as an example), 1408685345915193, Excel will store it as
1408685345915190. Interestingly enough, should I enter a larger number, for
example replacing the 1 at the beginning of the number to a 2 (theoretically
a larger number than the one ending with a 3), then Excel accepts it no
problem. Does anyone have any thoughts as to the root cause of this
particular issue? Note that I can explain further if unclear.

Thanks in advance for any feedback on this!

 

[Don Guillett]

15 max

 

[Gord Dibben]

Christian

Excel will accept a maximum of 15 significant digits no matter what the first
digit is. The rest get changed to zeros.

If you are getting 16 digits with no zero, then I would submit that Excel sees
the number as Text and will treat it as such.

In an adjacent cell enter =ISNUMBER(cellref)

TRUE of FALSE?


Gord Dibben Excel MVP

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

I've come across an interesting issue in Excel 2000 in which if I enter the
following number (as an example), 1408685345915193, Excel will store it as
1408685345915190. Interestingly enough, should I enter a larger number, for
example replacing the 1 at the beginning of the number to a 2 (theoretically
a larger number than the one ending with a 3), then Excel accepts it no
problem. Does anyone have any thoughts as to the root cause of this
particular issue? Note that I can explain further if unclear.

Thanks in advance for any feedback on this!

If you only want to *display* this number, let the first character be an
apostrophe. The caharacters tha follow will be treated as text and the
apostrophe won't be displayed.

/Fredrik