Formatting Excel (.xls) for 2 decimal places

I was creating a spreadsheet today to help me calculate the running costs of an eBook that I’m writing for a client. It’s a bit complex so I’ll leave the details for another day…

In any case, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to change the decimal in my cells over to two decimal places. I found instructions for Office 2003, but I’m using Office 2007 and the setup is completely different.

So – after a bit of digging, I found the answer in a Yahoo answers post and I thought that I would share it here in hopes that in the future somebody doesn’t have to waste 10 minutes trying to sort through search engines trying to find the answer to this problem.

Step 1
Select the cell(s) in your .xls or .xlsx file that you want converted over to 2 decimal places

Step 2
Right click with the cell(s) selected and choose “Format Cells”

Step 3
Under the tab “Number”, you should see “Category” along with a long list of different options. Choose number here.

Step 4
On the right there will be a box that says “Decimal Places” – just choose the number of decimal places that you want this/these cell(s) to have

Step 5
Hit “Ok”.

You should be all set. Now, this will work for any amount of decimal places you want displayed, not just 2. But, since I was looking to display two decimal places… this is what I’ve chosen to write about.

If this has helped you out, feel free to send me a link back.