Displaying large numbers

[ceblaser]

In a worksheet that one of my co-workers uses, she needs to input
numbers that are up to 16 characters long. However, Excel for some
reason is changing the last number entered to a 0. For example, if she
entered 4223980067104216, Excel would change it to 4223980067104210.
If she entered 4223980067104212, Exel will change it to
4223980067104210. I have tried changing the column widths, cell
formatting, check the options under Tools, but I am not able to find
anything to keep this from occuring.

I have noticed that Excel does not make this change if only 15 numbers
are entered into a specific cell. However, if you enter 16, the last
digit is changed to a zero. If you enter 17, the last two are changed
to zeros.

Any help on this topic, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.



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[John Wilson]

ceblaster,

Answered in your next post in this ng.

John

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

Excel only supports 15 digits of precision. This is the IEEE floating point
standard. I suspect these are credit card numbers - if so, you don't need
to do any math on them - so store them as text strings. Format the column
as Text, then you can enter the numbers and they will not be converted or
prepend the number with a single quote
'4223980067104216