What means Fix in the status bar in excel

[Guest]

In the status bar where you see the indicators NUM for Numlock CAPS for
Capital letters there is also FIX.
What does it mean and how is it activated?

Thanks for your help

 

[Jim Cone]

It means that Excel is using a fixed number of decimal places in numbers.
No decimal point needs to be entered as Excel will automatically do that.
Change it or disable it from the Tools (menu) | Options | Edit (tab)
--
Jim Cone
San Francisco, USA
http://www.realezsites.com/bus/primitivesoftware



"Spil" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
In the status bar where you see the indicators NUM for Numlock CAPS for
Capital letters there is also FIX.
What does it mean and how is it activated?

Thanks for your help

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Spil,
Example with Fixed decimal as 2, when you
enter 12500 it will be entered as 125.00
You can type the decimal point yourself and override the
setting. i.e. enter 125.00
or as 125. (with a trailing decimal point, except in Excel 2003)

It is something that Accountants seem to like, to me even if I
always remembered to type the decimal point for a whole
number, it might be difficult to remember if a cell is numeric (General)
or Text.

This is something that people change, thinking that is will change
the presentation, check it, doesn't do what they thought, but they leave
it in anyway and don't find out that they've been messing up their data
until several days later. It hits everybody sooner or later, just like the
problems of selecting a single cell when doing a sort and find out
that their data has been discombobulated because of an empty column.

For more information on the little windows on the Status Bar see
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/statusbar.htm