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If I paste the number 1542819813881128.5 into a cell of Number format in Excel the pasted value is 1542819813881120.00.

Why do these applications round down the 8.5? Is there a way of preventing this?

I say Reinstate Monica
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MM01
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1 Answers1

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Spreadsheets are not designed for highly accurate calculations. The IEEE 754 specification for floating point math calls for only the 15 most significant digits to be stored. If the integer portion of a number is 15 places or longer, the mantissa or fractional part will be dropped.

The solution is to perform your calculations in something other than a spreadsheet, which is vexing for us who have gotten really good at spreadsheets.

K7AAY
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