The earliest Spreadsheets were designed for accountants. To this day, some of Excel's annoying behavior is to make the accountants happy [but it may not be making you very happy].
How can I set up Excel so that it always shows Dollars and Cents? Excel has a "Accounting" Format, but perhaps you're not interested in the look and feel of that Format. To have your Data present the way you'd like it to, take a look at the "Currency" Formatting options today with Bill, in Episode #1578.
Many 'Beginner Oriented' Excel How-To books say they can bring you from zero to familiar with the important features of Microsoft Excel -- 'Don't Fear The Spreadsheet' actually will. Why are we so confident? Because the questions in this book were asked by an absolute Excel Beginner -- Tyler Nash -- with the answers provided by three (3) Microsoft MVPs specializing in and dedicated to teaching others Microsoft Excel, from the ground up -- Kevin Jones, Tom Urtis and Bill Jelen Don't Fear the Spreadsheet
"This Book Makes Excel For Dummies™ Look Like It Was Written For Rocket Scientists!"
"The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Series"
Visit us: MrExcel.com for all of your Microsoft Excel Needs!
How can I set up Excel so that it always shows Dollars and Cents? Excel has a "Accounting" Format, but perhaps you're not interested in the look and feel of that Format. To have your Data present the way you'd like it to, take a look at the "Currency" Formatting options today with Bill, in Episode #1578.
Many 'Beginner Oriented' Excel How-To books say they can bring you from zero to familiar with the important features of Microsoft Excel -- 'Don't Fear The Spreadsheet' actually will. Why are we so confident? Because the questions in this book were asked by an absolute Excel Beginner -- Tyler Nash -- with the answers provided by three (3) Microsoft MVPs specializing in and dedicated to teaching others Microsoft Excel, from the ground up -- Kevin Jones, Tom Urtis and Bill Jelen Don't Fear the Spreadsheet
"This Book Makes Excel For Dummies™ Look Like It Was Written For Rocket Scientists!"
"The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Series"
Visit us: MrExcel.com for all of your Microsoft Excel Needs!
Transcript of the video:
MrExcel podcast is sponsored by Easy-XL.
“Don't Fear the Spreadsheet” podcast episode number seven: dollars and cents.
Well hey, welcome back to the “Don't Fear the Spreadsheet” podcast I'm Bill Jelen from MrExcel, today's question there's Tyler Nash.
Tyler: How can I set Excel up so that it always shows dollars and cents?
Bill: All right Tyler, excellent question, well hey, most people out there are going to say well hey this is a no-brainer it's this big dollar sign icon here choose that column hit the dollar sign icon and you're good to go but this is one that annoys me, I like to have my numbers right justified and the headings right justified and when I choose that dollar sign they move the numbers over just a little bit so this is something called accounting format which is something that accountants like and if you're not an accountant or you don't work in accounting then why the heck do you like this?
Fine I used to work in accounting and i still hate this format so rather than use the obvious one the one that's right there that's just begging for you to use it, I want to use something called currency.
To get to currency, we come to this drop-down open it up and choose currency like that.
All right now, say well what's the difference?
First difference, the extra space is not there the dollar sign is right next to the numbers instead of over here on the left hand side the other place where this really comes into in the play is how it handles negative numbers, so I'm going to go into the next worksheet here where I've set up a couple of columns, I'm going to make this one be accounting the easy icon and then currency a couple of extra clicks open and then choose currency and you'll see that for negative numbers the accounting uses parenthesis and that's actually why they don't have that number against the right edge of the cell.
Currency uses a negative sign, a minus sign, so it's your personal preference for me though I like currency I'm actually pretty annoyed that they put the accounting format there instead of the currency format because after all Excel should be tuned to exactly what I want all right.
Well hey, if you're new to spreadsheets, check out the book “Don't Fear the Spreadsheet”, 150 beginner Q &A, three case studies, a crash course in Java you this afternoon.
This is the book that makes Excel for dummies looks like it was written for rocket scientists.
“Don't Fear the Spreadsheet” podcast episode number seven: dollars and cents.
Well hey, welcome back to the “Don't Fear the Spreadsheet” podcast I'm Bill Jelen from MrExcel, today's question there's Tyler Nash.
Tyler: How can I set Excel up so that it always shows dollars and cents?
Bill: All right Tyler, excellent question, well hey, most people out there are going to say well hey this is a no-brainer it's this big dollar sign icon here choose that column hit the dollar sign icon and you're good to go but this is one that annoys me, I like to have my numbers right justified and the headings right justified and when I choose that dollar sign they move the numbers over just a little bit so this is something called accounting format which is something that accountants like and if you're not an accountant or you don't work in accounting then why the heck do you like this?
Fine I used to work in accounting and i still hate this format so rather than use the obvious one the one that's right there that's just begging for you to use it, I want to use something called currency.
To get to currency, we come to this drop-down open it up and choose currency like that.
All right now, say well what's the difference?
First difference, the extra space is not there the dollar sign is right next to the numbers instead of over here on the left hand side the other place where this really comes into in the play is how it handles negative numbers, so I'm going to go into the next worksheet here where I've set up a couple of columns, I'm going to make this one be accounting the easy icon and then currency a couple of extra clicks open and then choose currency and you'll see that for negative numbers the accounting uses parenthesis and that's actually why they don't have that number against the right edge of the cell.
Currency uses a negative sign, a minus sign, so it's your personal preference for me though I like currency I'm actually pretty annoyed that they put the accounting format there instead of the currency format because after all Excel should be tuned to exactly what I want all right.
Well hey, if you're new to spreadsheets, check out the book “Don't Fear the Spreadsheet”, 150 beginner Q &A, three case studies, a crash course in Java you this afternoon.
This is the book that makes Excel for dummies looks like it was written for rocket scientists.
