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 by Powers of 10.

Rounding by Powers of 10

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 14, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


If you want to round a number to the nearest 10, 100, or 1000, you can use the ROUND function with negative values for the second parameter. This approach works very well—and very quickly.

For instance, if you have a value in cell D6 and you want to round it to the nearest 100, you could use the following formula:

=ROUND(D6,-2)

This rounds to second digit to the left of the current decimal place. For instance, if D6 contains the value 12345, then the formula returns 12300. Similarly, if D6 contains 12351, then the formula returns 12400.

You can use the same technique to round to the nearest 10 by using -1 as the second parameter, or to the nearest 1000 by using -3.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2404) 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 by Powers of 10.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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