Number formatting is driving me crazy...please help

[ramathires]

I have an excel document that has a field for credit card number. I just merged two adjacent cells and formatted the cells to accept a number. The problems is whenever I type is 16 digits for a credit card, the 16th digit is replaced by a "0". If I type in 15 digits the number looks fine and there are no problems. But the 16th digit is always replaced by a "0". I checked the formatting and rounding properties but I cant see anything wrong. Please help. I have to get this form done today.

 

[Brian from Maui]

Try this thread

http://www.mrexcel.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=7409&forum=2

 

[Barry Katcher]

I tried 16 numbers and yup, I got the same zero at the end. Dunno why.

Since I doubt that you are going to be doing any calculations (i.e. sums) based on these entries, why don't you just format the cells as "text"?

Better yet, set up a custom format. Click on Format-Cells-Custom and in the window type in #### #### #### ####.

You can then enter all 16 numbers and it will automatically display with a space between every four numbers, same as on the card. You can even get a sum this way, if you need a hash total.

 

[Mark W.]

The largest integer that Excel will accept has 15 digits. You should format the cells containing your card numbers as Text before your enter their value. There's no need to format as numeric since you probably won't be doing arithmetic operations on card numbers.
This message was edited by Mark W. on 2002-05-09 13:59