General Question

hiitisit's avatar

Does Excel allow you to format cells to view in standard form?

Asked by hiitisit (136points) November 8th, 2009

Or maybe yo can explain this 7.2E-11 what’s the E for? this is how excel displays the numbers as.

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2 Answers

Mamradpivo's avatar

Change your settings (format->cells) to something that will display easier. It’s currently rounding.

I’m not in front of my computer, but you can format the cells to show data any way you like.

prasad's avatar

It’s a scientific cell format. “E” represents 10; e.g. 100 = 1.00E+02, i.e. 10 to the power of 2, and which is 100.
200 = 2.00E+02 = 2 * [10 (which is “E” here) to the power of 2] = 2 * 100 =200.
4000 = 4.00E+03 = 4 * [10 (or “E”) to the power of 3] = 4 * 1000 = 4000.

For large numbers, i.e. having too many digits, it is used. I did a little experimenting and found that if you add 11th zero (10000000000 0) , it shifts to the scientific format.

We used similar in physics (10 instead of “E”).

To change it to other, right click the cell(s) and click “Format Cells”. Choose from the General, Number, Percentage, Fraction, Text, Accounting, Currency,...

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