How to Modify Decimal Places in Excel: 3 Ways

Want to increase, decrease, or round off the number of decimal places in Excel? Here's how you can do it easily.

Getting started with Excel and its functions can seem daunting at first. However, this Office program does a great job of automating tasks that otherwise would require us to spend hours on. If you are dealing with large data sets in Excel, it is good practice to keep things simple where you can in order to streamline the process.

It means simplifying the numbers, which will at some point involve modifying decimal places so that calculations are simpler and results are easier to understand. In this guide, we will see how you can modify the decimal places in your worksheet to make it less daunting.

How to Change the Number of Decimal Places in Excel

Excel allows you to increase or decrease the decimal buttons using a built-in feature. Moreover, you can also set a default preference for the number of decimal places if you have a certain requirement.

To increase or decrease the decimal buttons, follow these steps:

1. Launch Excel and head over to your worksheet.
2. Select the targeted cells.
3. Under the General dropdown in the Home tab, you should see Increase decimal and Decrease decimal icons. Click on the required option to modify the decimal places.
   

This should successfully make the targeted changes.

How to Limit Decimal Places in Excel

If you wish to make changes to decimal places on other worksheets as well, the best way to move forward is by setting a default decimal places number. Here is how you can do that:

1. In Excel, select Options from the left pane.
   
2. In the following dialog, choose Advanced from the left pane.
3. Head over to the Editing options section and checkmark the box associated with Automatically insert a decimal point.
   
4. Now, add a number in the Places text box. If you want to add digits to the right of the decimal point, enter a positive number. To add digits to the left of the decimal point, enter a negative number.
5. Click OK to save the changes.

Alternatively, you can also use the Format Cells command in Excel to limit the decimal places. However, this method will only help you limit the decimal places in a single worksheet. Follow these steps to proceed:

1. Launch your worksheet and select the targeted cells.
2. Right-click on the selected cells and choose Format Cells options from the context menu.
   
3. In the following dialog, select Number from the Category section.
   
4. Type the required number in the box associated with Decimal places. For instance, if you want the cells to have 2 decimal places, type 2.
5. Click OK to save the changes.

How to Automatically Round Off Decimals in Excel

Rounding numbers off makes it easier to understand them. If you are dealing with a large data set in Excel, rounding each number can be quite a time-taking and hectic task.

Fortunately, Excel comes with a number of built-in functions and in this method, we will be using the ROUND function to automatically round off decimals. Here is all that you need to do:

1. Launch your worksheet and create another column next to the original value column for the round-off results. We will be naming this column as Results.
   
2. Now, select the new cell next to the first value that you want to round off and head over to the Formulas tab.
3. Click on Math & Trig.
4. Choose ROUND from the list of options available.
   
5. In the next dialog, enter the number you want to round. You can also enter the cell number of the targeted value.
6. Next, enter the number you want after the decimal place in the text field for Num_Digits.
7. To add digits to the right of the decimal point, enter a positive number. To add digits to the left of the decimal point, enter a negative number. In case you want to round off to the nearest integer, type 0.
   
8. Click OK to save the changes. You will now see the rounded-off value in the sheet in its respective cell.
9. To apply the changes to all values, use the autofill feature in Excel.
   

You can also use the ROUND function in nested formulas to make the desired changes.

Simply Your Spreadsheets

Now that you know how to modify decimal places in Excel, you can increase or decrease the decimals, automatically round them off, and limit the numbers. You may want to learn more about such Excel functions if you regularly deal with large data sets. They can boost your productivity and make calculations much easier for you.