Number formatting does not work ?

[Joe Miller]

attempts to format numbers to 5 decimal places is not working [i.e.] nothing happens when I attempt to do so.
I have unsuccessfully tried many different things to re-format the number of decimal places.
any ideas and/or suggestions will be much appreciated.

[boopathiraja]

Hi, May be number stored as text check for it

[bmouse]

Should work just fine, perhaps you're using a different separator?

I believe the default separator for decimals in excel is a dot not a comma. So for example with correct formatting this is treated as a number 5.25678 where as this is not 5,25678.

[Sam Capricci]

you can test the values by pointing =ISNUMBER(A2) (if they are in col A for example) at it and if it returns false it likely isn't stored as a number.

[Sam Capricci]

if you are pointing to the values in formulas you can place -- ahead of the reference to those values and it will treat them as values.
One way I used to change text to values is do a find and replace, find 1, replace all with 1 (of course not matching entire cell contents) and repeat from 0 to 9 and it takes care of the change.

[Bobsone]

Should work just fine, perhaps you're using a different separator?

I believe the default separator for decimals in excel is a dot not a comma. So for example with correct formatting this is treated as a number 5.25678 where as this is not 5,25678.

This is true...
Unless the Excel version is from some non-English countries.
This is something I have to be wary of because our Excel is German and there are some differences, for example it uses a comma to delineate decimals.

But having said that, when a cell is formatted to 5 decimal places, our Excel 2007 will automatically place the required comma followed by 5 digit places (even if they are all zeros).

Joe Miller
Just to cover the basics...
What happens if you format a blank cell to number with 5 decimal places, enter a single digit (e.g. 1) in the cell and press enter? When I tried it the cell transformed to 1,00000.

[Joe Miller]

Thanks, that was my problem.