Weird geeky spreadsheet question

[Drama Llama]

I am making a spreadsheet in google sheets.  As part of the spreadsheet, I am inputting percentages, some of which are whole numbers, and some of which have one digit after the decimal point (tenths).

Sheets keeps changing them into numbers with 2 digits after the decimal point (e.g. I enter 29.2% and it turns it into 29.20%) which is just wrong, because it's the wrong number of significant digits.  

It makes absolutely no difference to the project I am working on.  I am not doing some calculation where significant digits will matter.  I am just using the percentile points to order things, or maybe average things, and the zeroes won't change that.  

However, it is driving me a little nuts (or honestly, a little deeper into nuts territory) and making me far less motivated to look at the darn spreadsheet.  

Does anyone know how to fix this not-really-a-problem?

Edited December 28, 2023 by Drama Llama
Sheets not Excel

[Danae]

Is it correct in Google sheets and then the extra zero is added when you open it in Excel?

[Drama Llama]

5 minutes ago, Danae said:

Is it correct in Google sheets and then the extra zero is added when you open it in Excel?

Nope, I miswrote.  Google sheets is changing it.  I initially called it Excel, and then realized of course it isn't, and went back to change it and missed some of the times I called it Excel.

But I haven't actually touched Excel.  It's in Google sheets, which is where I want it to be. 

[wendyroo]

For me, the buttons that control cell format are in the upper bar to the right of the zoom setting and to the left of the font. The ones that control number of decimal places look like .0 and .00 with tiny arrows above them. I think you just need to select the cells you want to change and press the .0 button which decreases the number of decimal digits by one.

[Drama Llama]

11 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

For me, the buttons that control cell format are in the upper bar to the right of the zoom setting and to the left of the font. The ones that control number of decimal places look like .0 and .00 with tiny arrows above them. I think you just need to select the cells you want to change and press the .0 button which decreases the number of decimal digits by one.

Thank you!  That worked, although annoyingly when I applied it to the whole column, it added zeros to the ones that were whole numbers.  

 

[EKS]

I don’t know about Google sheets but you can fix the number of decimal places in Excel.  It is part of the cell formatting options.

[Laura Corin]

1 hour ago, Drama Llama said:

Thank you!  That worked, although annoyingly when I applied it to the whole column, it added zeros to the ones that were whole numbers.  

 

That's what Excel does. You just set number of decimal places for the cells. Whole numbers will get one or more zeros to fill in those places.

[Tree Frog]

Excel is hands down better than Google Sheets. When I created a spreadsheet in Sheets, I would have the formatting set up correctly and at some point halfway through the project, it reverted on some of the columns, but not on others. I didn't know anything had changed until I tried to use the data. It was so frustrating I gave up and went with Excel, then put it into Drive. That was about 5 years ago, so hopefully Sheets has had updates and op has better luck than I did.

[EKS]

3 hours ago, Tree Frog said:

Excel is hands down better than Google Sheets.

This!  And all of the Microsoft Office products are hands down better than the Google substitutes.