Excel 2007 is automatically inserting decimals into my numbers. Help!

September 26, 2010 8:12 PM

When I enter numbers in an Excel 2007 spreadsheet, it automatically inserts a decimal before the final digit. How can I STOP it from doing this?

I am trying to enter my students' most recent assignment grades on an Excel 2007 spreadsheet. Every time I enter a number, Excel automatically inserts a decimal before the final digit. For example, let's say my student got 65% on the assignment. I type in "65". It appears in the cell as 6.5, which is obviously not correct! The only way I can get the number 65 to appear is to type in 650. I thought maybe it was a problem with this particular workbook, so I started a new one and it does the same thing. I tried opening up old workbooks/spreadsheets and it acts the same way.

I am OK with using Excel to record and calculate grades but I am not particularly proficient with it. I searched through Excel Help; I experimented with different menus; I Googled for a fix and have been unable to find one.

I am getting very frustrated, as it is difficult to remember to type a zero after each number, and I am terrified I'll forget and enter a grade incorrectly.

posted by hurdy gurdy girl to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: Not sure if this helps, but try this: Click on the funky Microsoft looking symbol at the top left. A drop down menu will appear. On the bottom, click on Excel Options. Click on Advanced. Make sure the second from the top button is not checked, "Automatically insert a decimal point". Or alternatively, add a decimal point with one digit just to see if you can move it over one.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:18 PM on September 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Make a copy of, then erase your normal.xlt file and restart Excel, and open a new document. See if it still happens.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 8:19 PM on September 26, 2010

I have Excel on a Mac, but this should be pretty similar: select the row, then click "Format" and "cells" from the top menu. You'll be given all sorts of options. Under "number" you may want to select "number" with zero decimal places, or "percent" with zero decimal places.

Sorry if you've already tried this and it didn't help.
posted by moira at 8:22 PM on September 26, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks for the quick answers everyone! I tried JohnnyGunn's suggestion and it worked like a charm. Thank you very, very much because I was tearing my hair out over this, and I would never have figured that out on my own.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:32 PM on September 26, 2010

Response by poster: I have to say I am still curious as to why my computer started doing this all of a sudden. I have never even opened that menu, and I never put that checkmark in the box, so I don't know how it got there.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:33 PM on September 26, 2010

Best answer: I have never even opened that menu, and I never put that checkmark in the box, so I don't know how it got there.

You might have opened a file using a template that overwrote your normal/default template (that's the normal.xlt file i was talking about).
posted by Threeway Handshake at 8:37 PM on September 26, 2010

Response by poster: Aha, thank you. I bet that was what did it.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:34 PM on September 26, 2010