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The Difference Between Rounding and Truncating

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Q. In Excel, what’s the difference between rounding and truncating ?

A. When rounding a number, Excel changes the number displayed in a cell but stores the complete number you entered. So if you entered 345.679 in a Currency -formatted cell, Excel would display $345.68 (rounding up the last digit from 7 to 8). But it would store the full value: 345.679 . In fact, you’ll always see that full value in the Formula bar at the top of the screen. The comma and the 2 (,2) after the number indicates the number of decimal places to display.

To round down, the formula is =ROUNDDOWN(num,digits) .

When Excel truncates, it chops off part of the entered number and performs no rounding at all. So if you input 345.679 and format the number for no decimal points, it cuts off the digits after the decimal point. Again, the full stored number appears in the Formula bar.

There are many subtleties in using rounding and truncating, so to learn more go to Excel Help .