I'm trying to write an Excel macro using VBA that will return only the first 5 numbers in a cell when the length of that cell exceeds 20. The field normally returns 15-digit alphanumeric results (which I need to leave alone) but in certain exceptions will return a 5-digit number with a multitude of zeroes following it (1234500000000000000000000...) which Excel converts into scientific notation (1.2345E+160). I am able to convert the cells to numbers instead of scientific notation and view the whole number.
I've tried to use code such as =IF(LEN(A1)>20,LEFT(A1,5),A1) and it just returns 1.2345E+160. Even though the whole number is displaying, Excel still thinks the cell length is 11 and won't display the first 5 digits.
I've also tried lines such as =IF(A1="E",LEFT(A1,6),A1) thinking it would detect the E, return 1.2345, and I could just remove the decimal points, but that didn't work either (it just returns the original 1.2345E+160).
I got the same results whether the cell was formatted as number or text. Is there a way around this?
Thank you for your time!
You are trying to use string manipulation on a number. Instead use math:
=A1/1E+160
If you do actually want to treat this thing as text, understand that the underlying value being stored is your 12345000000000000... and there is no decimal point in that thing. So you'll have to convert to text and add the decimal:
=LEFT(TEXT(A1,"0"), 1) & "." & MID(TEXT(A1,"0"), 2, 4)
But that's pretty ugly. I would just stick with math.
Related
If I have entered a certain 4 digit number for example ,1234 how do I choose like the first 2 numbers or the last two numbers from the cell by that i mean suppose i want it to return 34 for the last two digits and I want it to return 12 for the first two digits. So anytime I change my 4 digit number it works the same way.
You may use the LEFT and RIGHT functions, e.g.
=LEFT("1234", 2)
=RIGHT("1234", 2)
If your 4-digit number is, in fact, a string you can parse the string as suggested by #Tim Biegeleisen. In my Excel 365, when I enter 1234 in a cell formatted as General I can use the same method.
=LEFT(A1, 2)
and
=Right(A1, 2)
However, this conversion of a number to text mustn't be presumed to work under all circumstances. Therefore you may prefer to convert the number to text explicitly in the formula.
=LEFT(TEXT(A1,"0000"), 2)
and
=Right(TEXT(A1,"0000"), 2)
This method has the added advantage of being able to handle numbers of less than 4 digits.
On the other hand, you can also extract first and last digits from a true number, without converting it to text.
=INT(A1/100)
and
=MOD(A1,100)
The main difference is that the results are also numbers (all partial strings are text). Therefore this would be the preferred method if you don't want to worry about strings, text, numbers, numerics and cell formats.
In the below code I am having problems making sure the file writer does not round my number off to a certain number of decimal places. I need to use a variant because sometimes the value is string and at other times it is a number.
How can I force it to write exactly what the variable is? For example the below code might show 0.00038 and I want to show the exact value.
Dim MyFile1 As Variant
Dim MyNumber as Variant
MyFile0 = "C:/myfile.csv"
fnum0 = FreeFile()
Open MyFile0 For Output As fnum0
MyNumber = 0.0003759656
Print #fnum0, MyNumber
Your code is fine. The issue is with excel. When opening a CSV in excel, including thru VBA, excel detirmines what a cell is. Typically, if it lloks like a number with more then 5 characters it will express it in Scientific notation or rounded to 5 places.
Note sure what you are doing with the CSV file before or where you are getting it from, but here are some options to prevent excel from changing your data:
In VBA use the Workbook.OpenText command to open the CSV with either:
-the all excel cells as text*
-the column stored number with so many decimal places
(note a max of 30 decimal places apply)
-a particular column store as text.
--A full list of option syntax here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb22351(v=office.12).aspx
You may also import your CSV into an excel spreadsheet, it will give you the option to choose data type for each column. Then run the VBA against the excel file.
If you are not doing formulations in excel, I would recomend storing the number as a text string. VBA automatically converts strings of numbers into numeric values when needed.
It's likely that you're experiencing floating point errors. They are are very small errors that occur when numbers are converted from/to base 10 (human) to/from base 2 (computer). For your purposes, you need to determine what it means that two values are not equal. It's not just val1 <> val2 because that won't account for the tiny errors. If you're dealing with money, for instance, you probably don't care about anything less than a penny. So you might determine inequality as ABS(val1 - val2) > .001. You just need to determine what your tolerance for equality is and compare to that standard.
It may be that your number is not being stored as a number in vba, and when you write it Excel converts it. Say you're number is 1.789 and you write it to a cell that is formatted as 'GENERAL'. Excel will write 1.79 (and think that's the number, not even a formatting issue).
What I've discovered, is if you convert the number to a decimal first CDEC(YOURNUMBER), it will write it correctly. For good measure, I also verify that the cell is '.NUMBERFORMAT = "GENERAL'
I need to be able to convert 047C1BEA3A2480 into Decimal. This should convert to 1262359242482816. I have a large amount of hex numbers that need converting so would need a formula or VB script.
I have tried some things including a VB Module, however with this I need to prefix the number with 0X but then gives me a decimal number that is out by 4.
Any ideas would be great.
Use the inbuilt CDec function
Debug.Print CDec("&H" & "047C1BEA3A2480")
This will give you 1262359242482816
Screenshot
Split into 2 7-digits and use the HEX2DEC function. Unfortunately, Excel cannot handle that big a number, so it is rounding when you put it back in Excel. For exmaple, try to paste the decimal version into Excel. But if you want the formula anyway.
=HEX2DEC(LEFT(A4,7))*16^7+HEX2DEC(RIGHT(A4,7))
Otherwise, use Siddarth's solution and put it in Excel as Text.
In the below code I am having problems making sure the file writer does not round my number off to a certain number of decimal places. I need to use a variant because sometimes the value is string and at other times it is a number.
How can I force it to write exactly what the variable is? For example the below code might show 0.00038 and I want to show the exact value.
Dim MyFile1 As Variant
Dim MyNumber as Variant
MyFile0 = "C:/myfile.csv"
fnum0 = FreeFile()
Open MyFile0 For Output As fnum0
MyNumber = 0.0003759656
Print #fnum0, MyNumber
Your code is fine. The issue is with excel. When opening a CSV in excel, including thru VBA, excel detirmines what a cell is. Typically, if it lloks like a number with more then 5 characters it will express it in Scientific notation or rounded to 5 places.
Note sure what you are doing with the CSV file before or where you are getting it from, but here are some options to prevent excel from changing your data:
In VBA use the Workbook.OpenText command to open the CSV with either:
-the all excel cells as text*
-the column stored number with so many decimal places
(note a max of 30 decimal places apply)
-a particular column store as text.
--A full list of option syntax here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb22351(v=office.12).aspx
You may also import your CSV into an excel spreadsheet, it will give you the option to choose data type for each column. Then run the VBA against the excel file.
If you are not doing formulations in excel, I would recomend storing the number as a text string. VBA automatically converts strings of numbers into numeric values when needed.
It's likely that you're experiencing floating point errors. They are are very small errors that occur when numbers are converted from/to base 10 (human) to/from base 2 (computer). For your purposes, you need to determine what it means that two values are not equal. It's not just val1 <> val2 because that won't account for the tiny errors. If you're dealing with money, for instance, you probably don't care about anything less than a penny. So you might determine inequality as ABS(val1 - val2) > .001. You just need to determine what your tolerance for equality is and compare to that standard.
It may be that your number is not being stored as a number in vba, and when you write it Excel converts it. Say you're number is 1.789 and you write it to a cell that is formatted as 'GENERAL'. Excel will write 1.79 (and think that's the number, not even a formatting issue).
What I've discovered, is if you convert the number to a decimal first CDEC(YOURNUMBER), it will write it correctly. For good measure, I also verify that the cell is '.NUMBERFORMAT = "GENERAL'
I'm building a VBA program on Excel 2007 inputing long string of numbers (UPC). Now, the program usually works fine, but sometimes the number string seems to be converted to scientific notation and I want to avoid this, since I then VLook them up.
So, I'd like to treat a textbox input as an exact string. No scientific notation, no number interpretation.
On a related side, this one really gets weird. I have two exact UPC : both yield the same value (as far as I or any text editor can tell), yet one of the value gives a successful Vlookup, the other does not.
Anybody has suggestions on this one? Thanks for your time.
Long strings that look like numbers can be a pain in Excel. If you're not doing any math on the "number", it should really be treated as text. As you've discovered, when you want to force Excel to treat something as a string, precede it with an apostrophe.
There are a couple of common problems with VLOOKUP. The one you found, extra whitespace, can be avoided by using a formula such as
=VLOOKUP(TRIM(A1),B1:C:100,2,FALSE)
The TRIM function will remove those extraneous spaces. The other common problem with VLOOKUP is that one argument is a string and the other is a number. I run into this one a lot with imported data. You can use the TEXT function to do the VLOOKUP without having to change the raw data
=VLOOKUP(TEXT(A1,"00000"),B1:C100,2,FALSE)
will convert A1 to a five digit string before it tries to look it up in column B. And, of course, if your data is a real mess, you may need
=VLOOKUP(TEXT(TRIM(A1),"00000"),B1:C100,2,FALSE)