RE: Large integers in excel 2003 are rounded ?? Is this a BUG ?

I find this ridiculous and a bug. It will really screw up your excel sheet
when you are using CC numbers (which I found the issue with). I'm currently
using the 'quote' workaround but I can't believe a spreadsheet programme
would just do this without warning. Microsoft - BAD DOG!

"Mike One" wrote:

> Format a cell as number and set decimal places to 0.
>
> Then enter 1818181818181818 in a cell and hit enter...
>
> Excel then CHANGES to the number to:
>
> 1818181818181810 ???? WHAT ???
>
> This can't be right can it ??, what am I missing ?

A credit card number, like a phone number or even a house number, is
not a real number - these are codes or labels. You may do some simple
arithmetic on them like add 1 to a house number and you get the next
one in sequence, but would the number divided by 2 make any sense?

You have 15 digit precision in the mantissa, and can represent numbers
up to 10 E308 and down to 10 E-307 which is a very large range. If you
want 16 digit precision you have to treat the "number" as text.

Pete

>I find this ridiculous and a bug.

It is not a bug. A bug is when a program performs contrary to its
specifications. The 15-digit limitation is documented. It is due
to MS using industry-standard double-precision floating point
numbers, as do nearly all computer programs.


--
Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Pearson Software Consulting, LLC
www.cpearson.com


"Mike One" <MikeOne@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F392A08F-48BE-4EB3-A245-E5A8556D93F0@microsoft.com...
>I find this ridiculous and a bug. It will really screw up your
>excel sheet
> when you are using CC numbers (which I found the issue with).
> I'm currently
> using the 'quote' workaround but I can't believe a spreadsheet
> programme
> would just do this without warning. Microsoft - BAD DOG!
>
> "Mike One" wrote:
>
>> Format a cell as number and set decimal places to 0.
>>
>> Then enter 1818181818181818 in a cell and hit enter...
>>
>> Excel then CHANGES to the number to:
>>
>> 1818181818181810 ???? WHAT ???
>>
>> This can't be right can it ??, what am I missing ?