Office 2007 Bible

Exploring the Types of Data You Can Use

An Excel workbook can hold any number of worksheets, and each worksheet is made up of more than 17 billion cells. A cell can hold any of three basic types of data:

• Numerical values

• Text

• Formulas

A worksheet can also hold charts, diagrams, pictures, buttons, and other objects. These objects aren’t contained in cells. Rather, they reside on the worksheet’s draw layer, which is an invisible layer on top of each worksheet.

About numerical values

Numerical values represent a quantity of some type: sales amounts, number of employees, atomic weights, test scores, and so on. Values also can be dates (such as Feb-26-2007) or times (such as 3:24 a.m.).

Cross-Ref

Excel can display values in many different formats. Later in this chapter, you will see how different format options can affect the display of numerical values (see the section “Applying Number Formatting”).

Excel’s Numerical Limitations You may be curious about the types of values that Excel can handle. In other words, how large can numbers be? And how accurate are large numbers? Excel’s numbers are precise up to 15 digits. For example, if you enter a large value, such as 123,456,789,123,456,789 (18 digits), Excel actually stores it with only 15 digits of precision. This 18-digit number displays as 123,456,789,123,456,000. This precision may seem quite limiting, but in practice, it rarely causes any problems. One situation in which the 15-digit accuracy can cause a problem is when entering ...