To make the sale to my customer I need to import numbers from a report into an Excel document. For example the number coming in will be 14.182392. The only reason for my guy not to buy the product is because he only wants to view 14.182 on the Excel sheet. Okay so the other catch is, the number CANNOT be rounded in any shape or form.
So what I need is a way to just show so much of number, WITHOUT ROUNDING.
Is this possible? Any ideas of how I could get around this would be fantastic.
Please try:
=TEXT(INT(A1)+VALUE(LEFT(MOD(A1,1),5)),"00.000")
Firstly =TRUNC is a better answer (much shorter). My version was connected with uncertainty in your requirement (it is odd!) and in the hope it might be easier to adjust if not exactly what you/your boss wanted.
TRUNC literally just truncates the decimals (no rounding!) to a length to suit (ie 3 if to show nn.182 given nn.182392 or say nn.182999).
LEFT may also be a better choice, but that depends upon knowing how large the integer part of your number is. =LEFT(A1,6) would display 14.189 given say 14.189999 in A1. However it would show 1.4189 given 1.4189999 in A1 (ie four decimal places).
The formula above combines text manipulation with number manipulation.:
INT takes just the integer value (here 14.)
MOD takes just the modulus – the residual that is not an integer after division, in this case by 1. So just the .182392 part. LEFT is then applied here in a similar way to as used above, but without needing to concern oneself with the length of the integer part of the source value (ie 14 or 1 etc does not matter).
VALUE then converts the result back into numeric format (string manipulation functions such as LEFT always return text format) so our abbreviated decimal string can then be added to our integer.
Finally, the TEXT part is for formatting but is hard or impossible to justify! About the only use is that it displays the result left-justified in the cell – perhaps a little warning that the number displayed is not the “true” value (eg it won’t SUM) because, as a result of a formula, it won’t be marked with a little green warning triangle.
The displayed values can use the TRUNC function like this,
=TRUNC(A1, 3)
But you must use A1 in any calculations to retain the precision of the raw value.
Easiest way I know:
=LEFT(A1; x)
where x = the amount of characters You want. Mind that the dot counts as a character as well.
Related
I have two columns for the time in and time out of the employee, and I want to determine their lates and undertimes. But I cannot properly do it, I already can do the negative value to zero but I just want to know how to do the positive value to zero.
This is my formula =(G10-C10)*1440 then as per my column values it will show a positive value but I want the positive value become ZERO
Thanks!
You could use IF, which would be the most popular choice:
=IF(G10-C10>0,0,(G10-C10)*1440)
Could be read as, 'if the difference is greater than 0 (positive), then put 0, otherwise put the difference itself'.
Or a little less common, but simpler:
=MIN((G10-C10)*1440,0)
As an alternative to Jerry's answer, after applying your original formula, you can change the format of the cells to something like this:
"0";-0;0
The first 0 is for positive. The quotes around it make sure the zero gets displayed literally.
The second section (each section separated by a semi-colon ;) is for negative and the last one's for zero values.
The zero without quotes here means that one number should get displayed compulsorily.
Here's the output:
I am working on a spreadsheet for a client that calculates values and shows them as fractions after a good amount of deductions. We were running some test after I had it all set and ready and they ran a certain number through the spread sheet. I'll try to beak it down as easily as possible (any value with brackets is user input. So Width is [94.5(94 1/2)] that number get subtracted by 7.5312(7 17/32 that equals 86.9688(86 31/32) that number is then divided by [3] which then equals 28.9896(28 95/96) This is where the problem is though. 95/96 is not a "real" fraction is there a way I can round numbers like this down to 64ths? They were expecting 63/64ths Even though the math is correct they need it to round down in those cases.
The If statement is this:
=IF(E4=1,(K4-F19)/1,IF(E4=2,(K4-G19)/2,IF(E4=3,(K4-H19)/3,IF(E4=4,(K4-I19)/4,IF(E4=5,(K4-J19)/5,IF(E4=6,(K4-K19)/6,IF(E4=7,(K4-L19)/7,IF(E4=8,(K4-M19)/8,IF(E4=9,(K4-N19)/9,IF(E4=10,(K4-O19)/10,0))))))))))
This is a single part of the IF statement:
=IF(E4=1,(K4-F19)/1
Is there a way around this or are they SOL(Sorta Outta Luck)?
Thanks for any insight.
Assuming in A1, please try:
=ROUNDDOWN(A1*64,0)/64
with suitable formatting.
This ensures that all results are multiples of 1/64.
I wrote a user-defined function for fractions to be displayed with superscripted & subscripted digits (available in Unicode), with denominator no more than the user wants to. I could basically turn π into ²²/₇ with "=Fraction(PI(),30)", since no other fraction would be closer to π with a denominator smaller than or equal to 30.
Then I'm thinking of writing an InvFraction function as well, to get from a string generated by the Fraction function into an actual number. As you can imagine, though, the value is not π anymore, but 3.142857... (i.e. ²²/₇). So I'm postponing the writing until I remove that sense of chasing a ghost I'm feeling about it.
I saw that one could make the Fraction function generate a size-2 array of values, then through the index function, let the user decide which one to display, or enter the Fraction function as an array function covering 2 cells. Neither one is ideal from my perspective, the first option because the second value, which could be π, gets lost through the index choice and is no longer retrievable, the second option because it forces two cells to contain the data (though I guess I COULD end up living with it).
I also thought of using user-defined types containing the string value for the fraction and the double value for the original input, but I noticed they don't work in the actual sheet, then informally confirmed the info there: Call VBA function that returns custom type from spreadsheet
Anyone would have any idea at how to tackle this? Thanks anyways for having taken the time to read.
Edit: To put it simply, if I were to program the InvFraction function as I conceived it with the tools and ideas I have, I could only manage to have “=InvFraction(Fraction(PI(),30))” to equal 3.142857... (22 divided by 7), but I would rather like it to generate 3.14159265... (π).
What is the best way to find the right column for the travelled miles using visual basic coding or some excel function and return the price from that column? HLOOKUP can't be used here because the lookup value isn't exact and the ranges in the table are also not with specific intervals (If they were, I could use e.g. FLOOR(travelled miles/100)*100 and find the price with HLOOKUP). Obviously, it's easy to find the price manually with a small table but with a big table computer will be faster.
Note that, if x is between a and b, then MEDIAN(x,a,b)=x. Combine this with some nested IFs:
=IF(MEDIAN(B5,B1,C1-1)=B5,B2,IF(MEDIAN(B5,C1,D1-1)=B5,C2,IF(MEDIAN(B5,D1,E1-1)=B5,D2)))
I'm on my phone, so just done the first three cases, but hopefully you can see how it continues.
(should note you need to remove the dashes for this to work)
Edit:
I also want to answer your question in the comments above. You can use the following to keep the dash, but get a number to work with.
Assume cell A1 has got the value 10-. We can use the FIND function to work out where the - occurs and then use the LEFT function to only return the characters from before the dash:
=LEFT(A1,FIND("-",A1)-1)
This will return the value 10, but it will return it as a string, not a number - basically Excel will think it is text. To force Excel to consider it as a number, we can simply multiply the value by one. Our formula above therefore becomes:
=(LEFT(A1,FIND("-",A1)-1))*1
You may also see people use a double minus sign, like this:
=--LEFT(A1,FIND("-",A1)-1)
I don't recommend this because it's a bit complex, but combining with the formula above would give:
=IF(MEDIAN(B5,--LEFT(B1,FIND("-",B1)-1),--LEFT(C1,FIND("-",C1)-1)-1)=B5,B2,IF(MEDIAN(B5,--LEFT(C1,FIND("-",C1)-1,--LEFT(D1,FIND("-",D1)-1-1)=B5,C2,IF(MEDIAN(B5,--LEFT(D1,FIND("-",D1)-1,--LEFT(E1,FIND("-",E1)-1-1)=B5,D2)))
A colleague and I encountered a behavior in Excel which isn't clear to us.
Background:
We have a tool which converts an Excel sheet into a table format. The tool calculates the formulas which are in excel and replaces variables inside it with specific values.
The excel tool is used by one of our customers who use values like (8) or (247).
These Value are automatically translated by excel to -8 or -247.
Question:
I saw that many people want to display negative numbers in parentheses. But why would Excel change values in parentheses to a negative number?
I know that I could simply change the cell config to text and this would solve the problem but I wonder if there is a reason for the behavior, since there seems to be no mathematical reason for this.
Its simply the different format of cells you are bringing the "values from" and "pasting to". ..... numbers with parentheses are in cells with "accounting" format and negatives are stored in general or standard number formated cells. To resolve you can change the format of destination cells to accounting using cell formatting as number>accounting.
To answer the why, it's because accountants put negative numbers in brackets for readability
Unfortunately, this is one of the excel feature/bugs that helps some folks and frustrates others. When opening a file or pasting content, excel will immediately and always try to parse any values into formats it deems appropriate, which can mess up data like:
Zip Codes / Tel. # → Numeric: 05401 → 5401
Fractions → Dates: 11/20 → Nov, 20th YYYY
Std. Errors → Negative Numbers: (0.1) → -0.1
For some workarounds , see Stop Excel from automatically converting certain text values to dates
Once the file is open/pasted, the damage is already done. At that point, your best bet is:
Updating the field and displaying as text (appending with ') to prevent re-casting
Formatting the field if the operation wasn't lossy and is just presenting the info differently
Running a clean if/else to pad or other convert your data based on the identified errors
Specific to displaying values back in parens, if excel is converting them and treating them like negative numbers (which may or may not be the appropriate way to actually store the data), you can apply a different format to positive and negative numbers to wrap back in parens.
It is standard practice to write negative values as numbers in parentheses, especially in accounting. This makes negative values stand out much more than a simple negative hyphen; compare -1 and (1).
Excel is a tool very commonly used by accountants and supports accountant-style spreadsheets. Therefore, entering (100) means having a value of -100, even if there is no minus hyphen!
Here is a fun fact, if you enter (-10), Excel will treat it as normal text.