Excel should calculate and display numbers properly, but doesn't.

[Guest]

Bentley College switched to Office 2003 this year, and it is good for the
most part. However, there are weird problems I've never experienced with
Excel before. When using "Accounting" for a cell format type, the dollar
signs do not all line up on the left. I have made sure that ALL cells in the
column are using the same formatting. On another worksheet, I am calculating
ratios from financial statements. All I'm producing are 3 digit numbers, and
the spacing is off. There is the number 3.87 in one cell and 3.07 in the cell
below it, and the 3.07 is further to the left than 3.87. I have tried tabs,
choosing different alignment types, but they all produce the same result. My
roommate has noticed the same problems with his Excel as well. Pretty
surprising for a product that has been in existence as long as Excel.

On a separate issue, I have a column of numbers in a financial statement and
it won't let me sum the cells. I get a "#VALUE!" error, but I have verified
all the cells simply contain numbers and I'm asking nothing more than to add.
I had to manually select a cell and add it to the next, which did work -
something I would think proves that the cells contained valid and workable
data.

 

[Ken Wright]

What happens if you select one of the values, hit the Format Painter icon
(Yellow brush) and then paint across all the other values. You should find they
now line up.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

Select the column of cells that won't add.

Format the cells as General
Then do Data=>Texttocolumns, select delimited, then on the next wizard
select a delimiter like Tab (that isn't in the cells). Then Finish.

I sounds like your numbers are being stored as Text Values; this should get
them reevaluated and stored as numbers.

 

[KRCowen]

It is possible that your test did not determine that the cells that look like
numbers are really numbers as far as the the summation formula is concerned.
An easy way to make sure that the numbers are really numbers and not text is to
either multiply the numbers by 1 or add 0 to the numbers. This will convince
excel that the cells are numbers and not text. This is a common problem when
reports from other systems (accounting systems in particular) generate output
in excel format. Your first problem could have a similar genesis. A first
clue that cells that appear to be numeric are not numeric is when they align to
the left. Of course you can align numbers to the left, but that is not usually
the case.

Good luck.

Ken
Norfolk, Va.