Posted by TacomaBoy on 1/28/13 4:28pm
Msg #452765

MS Excel Spreadsheet

Hmmmmm . . . I use MS Excel to keep track of my signing jobs. It works fine, except, I think I found a "bug" in the Excel program? i.e: When I copy and paste a long escrow/loan number (16 characters) into a cell, the number is not the same. It seems the last digit always changes to "0" when I paste it. I've checked the results using other programs, using identical information; it works fine. I've tried using various pasting and cell formats and the last digit changes to "0". Has anyone else experienced this unusual Excel phenomenon? Could this be a CPU processor problem?

Reply by Gregory/CA on 1/28/13 4:32pm
Msg #452768

That's strange. Haven't seen that before. You can try changing the cell or column from numerical to text field; or start your entry with an apostrophe and it will make that cell as Text.

Reply by TacomaBoy on 1/28/13 4:37pm
Msg #452770

MS Excel Spreadsheet

It's very weird! I'm eventually able to "force" the number after several attempts, but it seems Excel has it's own interpretation of what's going on???

Reply by Stephanie Santiago on 1/28/13 4:51pm
Msg #452774

Re: MS Excel Spreadsheet...like Gregory suggested, add an

apostrophe before the numbers - at the start of the numerical entry.

Reply by Susan Lancaster on 1/28/13 5:06pm
Msg #452776

Re: MS Excel Spreadsheet...like Gregory suggested, add an

This is a known limitation in Excel - a cell only has numeric precision up to 15 characters. The workaround is format the cell as text - just as has been mentioned in this thread. However you will need to format the cell first before you cut and paste. Also, usually there will be a little error icon that pops up, next to the cell, afterwards. You can just right click and ignore the error. It will not affect the integrity of the worksheet.

If you really want all the nitty gritty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeric_precision_in_Microsoft_Excel

Hope this helps!

Reply by VT_Syrup on 1/29/13 11:14am
Msg #452899

Modern computers have two pieces of hardware buried inside the processor, an arithmetic and logic unit (ALU), which handles numbers that have no decimal points, and a floating point unit (FPU), which handles numbers with decimal points. The designers of the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc, decided users would be too confused if they had to enter numbers with decimal points differently than those without, so they just decided to treat all the numbers as if they had decimal points. So 1027 is treated like 1027.0. All spread sheet programs since then have followed the same approach. (Of course, how the hardware handles the number is separate from how the spreadsheet displays the number to the user.)

Almost all computers today have floating point units that follow the same rules, and can all handle 15 significant figures. The numbers 123456789012345.0, 12.3456789012345, and 0.00123456789012345 are examples of numbers with 15 significant figures. There are only enough transistors inside the FPU to handle 15 digits. So any additional digits are set to 0. There is nothing wrong with Excel or your processor.

I once got a free prime rib lunch because of an ALU. I went to visit a colleague at IBM in Poughkeepsie, NY, to talk about the design of an adder (part of the ALU) for an IBM computer. IBM was announcing a new mainframe computer that day, and the company cafeteria was serving free prime rib to all employees. (I worked in East Fishkill, NY, and they had their prime rib the day before, so I got prime rib two days in a row).

Reply by MikeC/TX on 1/28/13 8:56pm
Msg #452818

How is the cell formatted?

If it's "General", anything that looks like a number will be treated like a number.

While the suggestions of adding an apostrophe to the beginning will certainly work, that's a bit of a PITA... Your best bet is to select that column (not just the cell you're trying to paste into) and format the entire column as text.

Reply by VT_Syrup on 1/29/13 8:29am
Msg #452867

Thanks, MikeC. Your post triggered me to learn something new. When a value is entered with an apostrophe before it, or if the cell is formatted as text, it is only displayed as entered, and stored as text. But you can still do arithmetic to it when you reference it in another cell (but of course once you do arithmetic the precision can only be 15 digits).

It never crossed my mind that I could use a number formatted as text as a number in a formula.

Reply by C. Rivera Chicago Notary Services on 1/29/13 10:38am
Msg #452892

you have to format the cells within a spreadsheet...

according to what data you input into those cells....

I do this and do not have any issues.