Excel formula / calculation issue

[manekankit]

I have below values in cells A1 and B1.
A1: 118999.26
B1: 118231.21

values in A1 and B1 are pasted and each contains 2 decimals only.

In the cell C1, when I apply formula "A1-B1", and increase decimals, it is giving me the answer as "768.050000000003"

Where is the last 3 coming from in the answer?

When I checked the same in a different laptop, it gave me some different answer but still the answer had some decimals on the extreme end.

What would be the issue?

Using office 365 on win10 laptop.

 

[Peter_SSs]

Have a look here: Floating-point arithmetic may give inaccurate result in Excel - Microsoft 365 Apps

 

[manekankit]

Have a look here: Floating-point arithmetic may give inaccurate result in Excel - Microsoft 365 Apps

Thank you.

 

[Peter_SSs]

You're welcome. Unfortunately Excel is not always perfect at arithmetic. If this could be an issue, it is mostly solved by rounding the results to a relevant significance. For example, with your sample data having 2 decimal places, instead of

=A1-B1

you might do something like ..

=ROUND(A1-B1,6)

 

[manekankit]

You're welcome. Unfortunately Excel is not always perfect at arithmetic. If this could be an issue, it is mostly solved by rounding the results to a relevant significance. For example, with your sample data having 2 decimal places, instead of

=A1-B1

you might do something like ..

=ROUND(A1-B1,6)

yes, rounding does the job.

However I am more surprised to notice that when decimals are increased, the same formula is giving different answer in the same pc/same file at a different point of time. further answer also differs when we test in a different pc.