Excel 2000 % format cell problem
Posted by Amber on February 13, 2002 7:43 AM
When my hard drive crashed we had to reinstall all programs on my new hard drive. Our computer guy reintalled Microsoft office 2000- now when I format cells to do a percentage- it wants to multiply everying by 100. Does anyone know why this happens- and how i can fix it?
Thanks!
Posted by Dawn on February 13, 2002 7:59 AM
Normally in Excel if you convert a cell to a percentage it moves the decimal 2 spots to the right. Once it is formatted you can just type in the number and it accepts it as the percent. It sounds like the values in your percentage column are entered as whole numbers, so when you are formatting them as a percent it looks like they are multiplied by 100 (the decimal point is moved 2 places to the right making 25 into 2500)
Posted by Mark W. on February 13, 2002 8:03 AM
Wait a second! Are you formatting values that
are greater than 1 as a percent value? Remember,
.01 is 1%. If you enter 1 and format it as a
percent you get 100%; however, internally it's
still stored as 1.
Posted by Mark W. on February 13, 2002 8:33 AM
A technicality, but an common misconception...
Formatting doesn't change the internal representation
of a value; therefore, the decimal isn't moved
by the formatting itself. If you enter 10% into
a cell that formatted as General. Two things
happen. The % percent operation alters the
value from 10 to 0.1. Next, Excel recognizes
that your entering a percent value and applies
the Percentage format which affects the manner
in which the value is displayed.
