Let’s look at some of the ways that you can format numbers in Microsoft Excel. I’ll just type in a number into a cell. It’s just a random number, just to show you how you can format this number. So by default, just going to leave as a plain numbers, it’s not going to do anything special unless you’ve already formatted the cell to apply certain characteristics to number or text that you put in that. So your first option up here and this is on the home ribbon, and this is the number section, is just drop down for your number format.
Now right now, let’s set it general, and that’s the default. There’s a no specific format for that. Now you could set it as a number. And if you do that, it’s going to add some decimal points and that’s going to be officially be a number now. You can set its currency and it’s got to go ahead and add a dollar sign and then in commas. Accounting, very similar to that, it’s going to give some extra room. Short date, if it was a date then it’s going to format it like this, long date then it’s going to format it like this. Time, it’s going to show this a time, okay? And it was really set as a time and I ahead and try to do it there. Percentage, you can have it set as a percentage. It’s got to add just small points and a person undersigned. A fraction again, didn’t really do anything here but if you had a fraction, then it would go ahead and put it in fraction format. Scientific and then just as text, which means it will align it to the left of the cell, which is the default for text. Okay?
So, let’s go ahead and change it back to general. And here is some particular ways that you can change the number formatting. You can click to add this dollar sign, or you could click the button beside it and you could choose to do the different currencies and there’s also even more accounting formats that you can use, different symbols, all this different currencies and then you can specify the decimal place. And you could also click here and it will put a percentage, click here and it will put a comma, and then you can also increase your decimal or decrease your decimal which just a few easy clicks. So that’s some ways that you can format your numbers in Microsoft Excel.
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