Excel 2000 in a Nutshell

Name

ROUND

Synopsis

You can use ROUND to round a numeric value so that it has the specified number of decimal digits. For example, if you want to round the value 1.45673 to two digits the function returns a value of 1.46 because the thousandths place contains a value of 6 so the hundredths place is rounded up from 5 to 6.

To Calculate

=ROUND(Number, Num_Digits)

The Number and Num_Digits arguments are both required for this function.

Number

Specifies a numeric value that you want to round.

Num_Digits

An integer value that specifies the number of decimal places that you want to round the numeric value specified for the Number argument to. If this argument is the numeric value is rounded to the closest integer value. If the Num_Digits argument is a negative value the value on the left side of the decimal is rounded down. For example, =ROUND(19.45, -2) returns a value of 17.

Example

Figure 14-15 illustrates the results when ROUND is used to round numeric values to one decimal place. The example allows you to compare these results to the ones achieved when you use ROUNDUP and ROUNDDOWN to always round the decimal values up or down, respectively.

Figuring Out How Values Are Rounded

ROUND uses the basic rules of rounding that we studied in school. If the value is less than 5, it is rounded down; if it is 5 or greater, it is rounded up. If you want to always round the value up, use ROUNDUP. To always round down, use ROUNDDOWN.