Random Rounding in Google Sheets

[kyphysics]

If anyone knows what on Earth could be happening and how to fix this, please let me know.

I'm using Google Sheets. I have lots of cells where I'm manually entering numbers with some having decimal places. All of a sudden, a random cell rounds a number UP for me. WTH? There's no rounding (that I can tell) in other cells.

Anyone know why this happens and how to remove it so I only get what I enter (i.e., no rounding)?

Props to anyone who knows how to fix this!

 

[mfb]

Is it feasible to delete the entire row or column this cell is in? Copy the remaining cells to a new row/column before if needed and if that doesn't create too many problems elsewhere in the sheet.

 

[anorlunda]

This is just a guess. The number may be fine, but the default formatting of that cell may be different. You can test that by changing the number format of the offending cell. Increase the number of decimal digits displayed.

Why the default may be different for different cells, I have no idea.

 

[berkeman]

The number may be fine, but the default formatting of that cell may be different.

That was my thought as well. I'm not familiar with Google Sheets, but in Excel I sometimes run into formatting issues when adding information to a spreadsheet.

I don't know what a similar fix would be in Google Sheets, but in Excel you can copy a cell (that you know has generic formats) onto a 2-D range of cells. That's one way to clear out any leftover formats in the target cells. There may be some other Edit option that will let you clear the formats in a selected 2-D range of cells.

 

[anorlunda]

An additional speculation is that the program a certain number of cells are created and populated with default empty cell values on startup. Later, more rows and columns can be added, and populated with empty cell default values.

It would be a bug if those two cases of default values were not the same, but it is certainly conceivable.