How to avoid rounding errors while calculating in Excel?

When you are calculating some formulas in Excel, the result may be incorrect sometimes due of the rounding, and you may be wondering how to avoid making rounding errors while calculating in Excel.

Avoid Rounding Errors while Calculating in Excel

Let’s understand step by step with an example.

Step 1

In the first step, let’s assume we have a product, sales and profit list for sample data as shown in the below screenshot for the same.

Step 2

In the next step, we are trying to calculate the profit ratio using the below formula. Please checkout this screenshot below for the same.

Formula

=B2/C2

Step 3

But the decimals are rounded and showing incorrect outputs as shown in the below screenshot for the same.

Avoid Rounding Errors by Setting Decimal Place

You can customise the number of places the decimal point is displayed to calculate without making any rounding mistakes.

Step 1

After making a selection of the cells that are to be formatted, use your right mouse button to access the context menu and select Format Cells. Please Check out the screenshot below for the same.

Step 2

The next step is to navigate to the Number tab, choose Number from the Category drop-down menu, and then in the right section, type a number into the Decimal places textbox until the appropriate result appears in the Sample section. Please check out this screenshot for the same.

Step 3

Then, select the OK button. The results of the calculation are now presented in the appropriate format. Please refer to the screenshot below for the same.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we explained how you can avoid rounding errors while calculating in Excel and to avoid rounding errors by setting Decimal place.