2 minus 2 equals -2E-15????

[bruderbell]

I've run into a terribly confusing thing. I'm using a few formulas with time, and I've got it all worked out. But somehow, when I enter the times 14:30 minus 12:30 (the formula makes appropriate conversions) and then subtract 2 from the difference, I don't get zero...rather I get -2E-15. When I use other values (I tried offsetting both values by one minute), I get the appropriate answer of 0. Any clues on this? Bug in excel? Reply to me if you are interested in helping, I can email you a portion of my spreadsheet.

 

[indiantrix]

If you intend to subtract 2 Hours from the result, then your formula needs to reflect the "2" as an element of a 24-hour day. That is, the formula will yield a Zero (when formatted to, say, hh:mm) as follows: =14:30-12:30-(2/24). HTH. Larry

 

[Doug.T]

2E-15 means the result is not zero but 0.000000000000002
Try reformatting the cell to fewer decimal places.

 

[pgc01]

Hi bruderbell

Computers usually do floating point arithmetics with the numbers converted to binary. This means that you are bound to have rounding errors like the one you are experiencing. So, it's not a bug.

Do not try to use formatting to solve the problem. Formatting doesn't change the value, just the way it's displayed.

You can round the number, in this case for instance to 10 decimals =ROUND(A1,10). This will get you the 0 you want.

For more information:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214118/

Hope this helps
PGC