How is that? Excel cannot show big numbers

Posted by Jan on September 11, 2001 12:05 PM

When I enter a big number as 12345678901234567890, the digits from number 16 is set to "0"! Why?
How can I help it?

Posted by Aladin Akyurek on September 11, 2001 1:02 PM

Jan,

The maximum limit for number precision is 15 digits, which is specified in Excel Help file. You can see it by doing a search using "limit" from within Help|Microsoft Excel Help.

Aladin

Posted by Jan on September 11, 2001 4:32 PM

Thanks Aladin,
but how does Excel calculate this maximum of 15 digits? Has it something to do with the way Excel calculate number - DEC/HEX?

Posted by Aladin Akyurek on September 11, 2001 4:50 PM

> but how does Excel calculate this maximum of 15 digits? Has it something to do with the way Excel calculate number - DEC/HEX?

That I don't know. I presume the programmers might use in the parser of Excel a primitive function (similar to LEN) of the programming language in which Excel is written.

As you might know, =LEN(A1) where A1 houses an integer is completely legal in Excel.

Aladin