Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007 Inside Out

Formatting in Depth

The formatting features in Office Excel 2007 control the display characteristics of numbers and text. It is important to keep in mind the difference between underlying and displayed worksheet values. Formats do not affect the underlying numeric or text values in cells. For example, if you type a number with six decimal places in a cell that is formatted with two decimal places, Excel displays the number with only two decimal places. However, the underlying value isn’t changed, and Excel uses the underlying value in calculations.

Note

When you copy a cell or range of cells, you copy both its contents and its formatting. If you then paste this information into another cell or range, the formatting of the source cells replaces any ...