Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life you may
have already noticed that Excel allows
you to type just about anything into
your worksheet along with text you can
use many different kinds of numbers such
as decimals percentages dollar amounts
dates and more to do this Excel uses a
feature called number formats and it's
really important to understand how they
work number formats to tell Excel
exactly what type of data you're using
when you enter something into a Cell
Excel will try to apply the right number
format automatically for example watch
what happens when we enter a calendar
date into this cell such as 1 / 1 / 2015
for January 1st if you look at the
number format drop-down menu on the Home
tab you'll see that this cell is now
using the date number format this tells
Excel that we're working with a calendar
date and not another type of number if
you click the drop down menu you'll see
that there are several other number
formats to choose from the general
format at the top is the default number
format for every cell in your
spreadsheet when Excel isn't able to
guess what type of data you're using it
will usually just leave the general
number format apply to that cell you
know in this example I think I'd like to
modify the number format to use the long
date option instead that way it'll be
easier to read in our spreadsheet
and there we go when you select a cell
with number formatting you'll see the
actual value of that cell in the formula
bar so the long date number format
hasn't changed the actual data in our
cell it only changes the way it's
displayed and number formats don't just
make our data easier to read for example
since Excel understands that this is a
calendar date we can use the fill handle
in the lower right corner of the cell to
continue this series of dates
so now we have January 2nd January 3rd
and so on definitely a lot easier than
entering each of these one by one
unfortunately Excel doesn't always
understand what we're trying to type the
same way that a person would and because
of this Excel requires you to enter your
data in a pretty specific way for
example watch what happens when we type
January first in this cell as you can
see the number format has not changed
this cell is still just using the
general number format and that means
Excel didn't understand what we wanted
it also means our fill handle isn't
going to work correctly instead it just
copies the data from this first cell
which isn't what we want to fix this
will need to change this value to
something Excel can understand such as 1
+ 1 / 2015 or just January 1 without the
St
there we go so you can see that Excel
has applied a custom date format to this
cell and that's because it understood
what we wanted and now just like before
we can see the cells actual value in the
formula bar and we can even use the fill
handle to continue this series of dates
let's take a look at another useful but
potentially confusing number format
percentages remember how we said before
that certain data needs to be entered in
a certain way well when you type a
number followed by the percent sign and
press Enter
the percentage number format will be
applied automatically to that cell in
this example let's say that we're
working with an 8% sales tax rate now as
you may remember from math class
percentages can also be written as a
decimal number for example if I change
the number format for this cell back to
general it'll appear as 0.08 which is
just another way of writing 8% I point
this out mainly because it's easy to
make a mistake with percentage
formatting if you're not being careful
for example if we tie it 8 into an empty
cell and then apply percentage
formatting afterward Excel will think
that we met 800 percent which isn't even
close to what we wanted in our
experience it's best just to include the
percent sign whenever you're entering a
percentage into Excel that way there's
much less risk of making a mistake like
this okay there's just one last thing
we'd like to point out below the number
format drop-down menu you'll see these
small buttons with a left and right
arrow these commands allow you to
control how many decimal places are
displayed in your cell as an example
let's say I'm working with a currency
value like $19.95 now as you can see
Excel automatically applied currency
formatting when we included the dollar
sign in this cell now you can show more
decimal places to increase precision or
show fewer to simplify your data or even
round it to the nearest whole number
just like before we're not changing the
actual value of this cell as we can see
in the formula bar we're just making it
easier to read in our spreadsheet now
that you know how number formats work
take some time to ensure that you're
using them correctly in your spreadsheet
you