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Cell Format will not take

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by csustar 1 view

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I have entered a formula: =IMSUB(C5,B5) C5 is 300.8 and B5 is 298.2, and I want a simple
-2.6 answer, but no matter how I format it, it comes out -2.60000000000002.
I have made every change I could under General and Number cell formatting to no avail.
I went in to Excel options to make some changes, unclicking "Use system separators" and designating the Decimal separator to 1. But that did not work, so put it back like it was.
I have been everywhere! to find help and spent 4 hours reading to no avail. Can someone please help me?

6 replies

by thumbsup2

The IMSUB formula is designed to return the difference of two complex numbers in x + yi or x + yj text format and is used primarily in Engineering formulas. It does not accept using a cell reference as input. The results of the formula are formatted as text, not numbers and therefor you will not be able to reformat the contents of the cell. Text has no decimal places.

An example of the use for this formula would be:

=IMSUB("13+4i","5+3i")

which would return the difference between the two complex numbers, in this case:
8 + i

If you want to find the difference between the contents of two cells, use:

=sum(B5-C5) or shortened to
=B5-C5

and then decrease the decimal places to just one decimal if necessary.

Note: If you increase the decimal places displayed in the =SUM cell, you'll see there is also a 2 in the decimal number at exactly the same place where you see it in your =IMSUB results. This is due to the fact that Excel can't add, or subtract for that matter, beyond a certain number of decimal places! ;) If you need to correct the results for use in delicate calculations later, use the round function ie:

=ROUND(B5-C5,1)

.

by csustar

This was the answer!! No where could I find in help that =IMSUB was for complex equations.

When I pulled up the formula bar it just states that it gives the difference between 2 numbers.

The gentleman that gave me the link, I appreciate that and it will be helpful for future times.

Thanks so much to everyone that helped.
Connie

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