Altering the Displayed Format of Numbers to the Nearest 100

Summary: Want information in a worksheet to be formatted and displayed as rounded to a power of ten? You may be out of luck, unless you want to round to either the nearest thousand or million. Here's why. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

Frank asked if there is a way, using a custom number format, to round the display of numbers to the nearest 10, 100, etc., without affecting the original numbers.

The answer is that there is a way, and there isn't a way. (Don't you love those answers?) There are custom number formats that allow you to round the display to the nearest thousand or the nearest million, as follows:

[<=500] "0";#,"000"
[<=500000] "0";#,,"000000"

The first format will round to the nearest thousand, and the second will round to the nearest million. If you are looking for a custom format that will round to some other power of 10, you are out of luck, however. In those instances, the best solution may be to simply create another worksheet that uses formulas for rounding and uses the contents of the original worksheet as the source.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (1937) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Remove Some Stress at Tax Time! Doing your personal income taxes can be a royal pain. Why not make the process just a bit less stressful with our 101-question checklist. You can prepare for filing your taxes with confidence, knowing you've covered all your bases.

Check out Filing Your Income Taxes Checklist today!

Helpful Links

Newest Tips

Subscribe

RSS Feeds

Altering the Displayed Format of Numbers to the Nearest 100