wierd data type???

[ZacCerrato]

I have a strange occurance and I wonder if one of you has come accross something like this:

I have a spreadsheet that I use to calculate an amount of money owed. The final cell that holds the total amount due is based on calculations from a few other cells. For instance:

Cell A1 = 1.32
Cell B1 = $15.00
Cell C1 =

=(A1*B1)

= $19.80 (Which is my total).

In the cell, in the spreadsheet this total appears as $19.80 or 19.80 (depending on if the cell is formatted as "General" or "Currency") However, when I copy this value and paste it into another cell on another spreadsheet...or I draw this cell's value to insert it into a Microsoft mail-merge, the value always appears with a huge number of decimal places, e.g. "19.800000000001".

Does anyone know why this may be occuring and how I could fix it? I've tried tons of different combinations for how the data is formatted (Number, General, Currency, etc.) but none of this has worked. Might it have something to do with how the data is formatted behind the scenes? (i.e. byte, interger, long, etc.)???

 

[snerz]

ZacCerrato
No idea why that is occuring. Never seen it before. But using formula
=Fixed(A1*B1,2)
should fix it

 

[shg]

You can also set the number format in Word in the field code for the merge field.

 

[mvptomlinson]

This is because Excel uses binary math to calculate, which doesn't always provide exact results as we would expect it (even for some simple math problems). See here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214118/en-us

 

[ZacCerrato]

Thanks, you guys are amazing!