Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Rounding Numbers.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 12, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Excel provides a number of built-in worksheet functions for rounding numbers. The exact function you should use depends on exactly what you need to do with a value.
The first worksheet function is ROUND. This function allows you to essentially round to any power of ten. The syntax is as follows:
=ROUND(num, digits)
The num argument is the number you want to round, while digits indicates how many digits you want the result rounded to. If digits is a positive value, then it represents the number of decimal places to use when rounding. Thus, if digits is 3, then num is rounded to three decimal places. If digits is zero, then ROUND returns a rounded whole number. If digits is a negative number, then ROUND returns a number rounded to the number of tens represented by digits. Thus, if digits is –2, then ROUND returns a number rounded to the nearest 100.
Two other worksheet functions that return rounded values are ROUNDUP and ROUNDDOWN. These functions use the same arguments as ROUND and behave virtually identically. The only difference is that ROUNDUP always rounds num up, meaning away from 0. ROUNDDOWN is the opposite, always rounding down, toward 0.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2147) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Rounding Numbers.
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Discover MoreNeed to sum up different ranges of cells? One of the tools you can use is the handy SUBTOTAL function, described in this tip.
Discover MoreNeed to round a value by a power of 10? You can do it by using the ROUND function as described in this tip.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here:
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