not to reduce Fractions

[rxp214]

Hello, I'm a teacher that has been delegated a task by a supervisor, and I need some help. My boss wants scores reported as fractions for end year tests. The denominator tells us which individual test, but excel wants to keep reducing the fraction. How can I get excel to not reduce the fraction.

 

[Oaktree]

Welcome to the board.

If your goal is to just *show* the fraction (as opposed to calculating a value for future use), consider using =A1&"/"&A2 or similar.

 

[rxp214]

I think there will be a future calculation with the scores, but even if not, I don't understand enough to understand the solution"=A1&"/"&A2 or similar" as you posted. Sorry for the burden of being so uneducated in excel.

 

[MarkAndrews]

Hello, I'm a teacher that has been delegated a task by a supervisor, and I need some help. My boss wants scores reported as fractions for end year tests. The denominator tells us which individual test, but excel wants to keep reducing the fraction. How can I get excel to not reduce the fraction.

Example to work with please

 

[rxp214]

No Reducing Fraction

Ok, we have a simple chart with a column for teachers to report scores. The scores have to be written as a fraction ex 7/91. The denominator indicates to the person not just how many questions, but which test was taken. This is because there are several forms of the test. A 6th grader may have the test form that has 82 questions and not 91. So the test score is reported out of 91 or out 82 or whatever the test that individual student took. The problem is that if the score is a reduceable fraction. Excel reduces 7/91 to 1/13 and so now we have an inacurate score that does not denote which form of the test was taken. All I want to do is stop excel from reducing the fraction. I can only imagine that the scores will be analyzed later to compare before and after performances, but that's not my part of the job.

 

[Oaktree]

The solution I posted would assume the 7 in your example was in A1 and the 91 in your example was in A2. If A3 =A1&"/"&A2, A3 will display 7/91 instead of rounding it.

I may be misinterpreting your question though. If you have a cell formatted as a fraction and enter 7/91, Excel will format it as 1/13, which may be what you're describing. If so, try entering '7/91 (with a ' before the 7) to enter it as a text value.

You can always use data --> text to columns with / as a delimiter to separate numerators from denominators later...

 

[Engineer Joe]

If you're not planning on making calculations with these numbers, but just viewing them, maybe you should select all of the cells that you might want to use to put the scores in, and then right click in the area. This will bring up a menu. Choose format. Under the number tab, choose text. That ought to keep excel from reducing the fraction. But it will probably also prevent you from using those cells in calculations.

 

[rxp214]

not to reduce fractions

yes, in each cell the teachers will put a score of x/91. It will appear as x/91 inside of the cell. Does that change your suggestions? The calculations I assume is the next natural step, but I was told to have the teachers insert the scores as a fraction. The problem then remains that in order to do calculations later then the number must be formatted as a number (fraction) and not aas text. Is there a way to have it display the unreduced fraction?

 

[Engineer Joe]

You might be better off putting the numerator in one column and the denominator in another column. For instance, assign column B to be the numerator column. Then column C to be the denominator column. Then you can use column D to be the result with a formula. Do this.

Put your numerator in B1
Put your denominator in C1
Then, in D1 put:

=CONCATENATE(B1,"/",C1)

You can copy this formula down as far as you need.

You can hide columns B and C after you're done and the only thing showing will be Column D. But you can still use B and C for any calculations.

 

[rxp214]

not to reduce fraction

The formula =CONCATENATE(B1,"/",C1) worked great, but how do I write the formula so it stretches all the way down column D and not just cell D1?

Thanks