error in sum formula result

I'm no Poweruser of Excel, just an occasional user with a little experience,
but I have come across a strange behavior, and wonder if you have seen this
before, and what might be causing it.

I recently did a new spreadsheet to track some costs, and constructed a
simple formula to extract a sum from three cells. The three cells each
contained currency numbers, lets say 235.45, 100.44 and 95.51. The formula
I used was =SUM(F13.F15), and the result was off by -.01. In other words
the last three digits of each number, 5,4 and 1 should have yielded a 0, but
in fact returned a 9. I checked to see that all the cells in question were
formatted as currency, with two significant digits after the decimal.

Anything I have overlooked? I assume it's some sort of rounding error, but I
sure would like to get rid of it.

I'm stumped, and any help would be appreciated.

TIA

babygrand

Hu babygrand,

See:

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/pennyoff.html

--

Kind Regards,

Niek Otten

Microsoft MVP - Excel

"babygrand" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm no Poweruser of Excel, just an occasional user with a little
> experience,
> but I have come across a strange behavior, and wonder if you have seen
> this
> before, and what might be causing it.
>
> I recently did a new spreadsheet to track some costs, and constructed a
> simple formula to extract a sum from three cells. The three cells each
> contained currency numbers, lets say 235.45, 100.44 and 95.51. The
> formula
> I used was =SUM(F13.F15), and the result was off by -.01. In other
> words
> the last three digits of each number, 5,4 and 1 should have yielded a 0,
> but
> in fact returned a 9. I checked to see that all the cells in question
> were
> formatted as currency, with two significant digits after the decimal.
>
> Anything I have overlooked? I assume it's some sort of rounding error, but
> I
> sure would like to get rid of it.
>
> I'm stumped, and any help would be appreciated.
>
> TIA
>
> babygrand
>
>