Ryan from Schaumberg sends in a tip for improving Excels presentation of scientific notation. Episode 562 shows you how.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 277 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey welcome back to the MrExcel netcast.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today we have a suggestion send in by Ryan from Schaumburg.
Ryan frequently has to work in scientific notation.
He's tracking milliamps, and he's frustrated that Excel changes the scientific notation.
So, for example, if he has to enter 35 milliamps, he enters 35E-3 and then 150 milliamps, he enters 150E-3 and Excel converts the scientific notation.
So, that way one is to minus 2 and the other one is to minus 1 and it actually looks like 150 is smaller than the 35 Ryan's suggestion is to select those cells and go into format cells, control+1, is the fast way to do format cells.
You'll see that it's in scientific notation with a couple of decimal places, but, instead we're gonna click on custom and change this instead of 0.0.
We're going to have it as pound pound zero.
So, two pound signs, a zero, a decimal point and a zero and that will force Excel to show everything in the same order of magnitude.
So, there you can see the 35 milliamps and 150 milliamps, 150 actually looks larger now.
Scientific notation is something that in accounting, we don't handle a whole lot.
But, certainly if you are an engineer or a scientist you run into this, rather than letting Excel give you the default scientific notation.
You go into the custom, number format and change things to make them look a little bit better.
Hey, thanks for starting by.
See you next time for another net cast from MrExcel.
I'm Bill Jelen.
Today we have a suggestion send in by Ryan from Schaumburg.
Ryan frequently has to work in scientific notation.
He's tracking milliamps, and he's frustrated that Excel changes the scientific notation.
So, for example, if he has to enter 35 milliamps, he enters 35E-3 and then 150 milliamps, he enters 150E-3 and Excel converts the scientific notation.
So, that way one is to minus 2 and the other one is to minus 1 and it actually looks like 150 is smaller than the 35 Ryan's suggestion is to select those cells and go into format cells, control+1, is the fast way to do format cells.
You'll see that it's in scientific notation with a couple of decimal places, but, instead we're gonna click on custom and change this instead of 0.0.
We're going to have it as pound pound zero.
So, two pound signs, a zero, a decimal point and a zero and that will force Excel to show everything in the same order of magnitude.
So, there you can see the 35 milliamps and 150 milliamps, 150 actually looks larger now.
Scientific notation is something that in accounting, we don't handle a whole lot.
But, certainly if you are an engineer or a scientist you run into this, rather than letting Excel give you the default scientific notation.
You go into the custom, number format and change things to make them look a little bit better.
Hey, thanks for starting by.
See you next time for another net cast from MrExcel.
