How to retain the insignificant Zeros in Excel 2000

[Joe]

I am trying to capture the number of decimal digits in a
cell. When the cell has all zeros(say 4) after the
decimal, the cell shows zero decimal digits instead of 4.

eg:

484.0000 decimal digits shown are 0 instead of 4 but if i
have 484.4432 it shows 4 decimal digits. So the problem
revolves around the zeros after the decimal.

Does anyone has a solution for this problem, please let me
know. Thanks in advance.

 

[Harald Staff]

Hi

To a computer, 484 and 484.0000000 is the very same number. It does not think in terms of
significant numbers the way we higher developed species do. You can format the cell to
display four decimals and it will round occational according to this for display purposes.
But it just doesn't get it anyway.

 

[whisperer]

Select all of the cells that you want to have 4 decimal places, then
from the menu bar select *Format - Cells* then in the resulting
dialogue box under the Number tab select *Number*

After the screen display has changed you can select the number of
decimal places to be shown

 

[Joe]

Hi,

thanks for the response.formatting to 0.00 will work, but
I may want to format to 0, 0.0, 0.00. 0.000 or 0.0000
depending on certain criteria. I want to avoid having to
reformat the colum each time, preferring to have the user
input the number of decimal places needed each time while
maintaining trailing zeroes. Any thoughts? Thanks for your
input.

 

[Ken Wright]

What are the criteria?? You may be able to use these in conjunction with the
TEXT / REPT functions to get you what you want. Would need some examples of
your criteria to give you more than that though.

 

[whisperer]

Joe,

Assuming the entry is directly into the cell then format all of thos
cells as text with perhaps a right justification to look like numbers
the entered figure will then be retained in the format it was entered.

Should you then need to do a mathematical calculation with the cells
you would just need to multiply them by 1 to convert them to a tru
number.

As Ken has already suggested there is a need for more detail of th
criteria that you are using to determine whether it should be 0, 1, 2
3 or 4 decimal places.

It may be that you will need to use VBA, but until there is mor
information I can not advise further.

If that is not what you are after achieving then feel free to contac
me direct.

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