How to add decimals in Excel

You can watch a video tutorial here.

Excel is frequently used for calculations and has many functions to help with basic mathematical operations.  When performing calculations, the resulting number may have many decimal places that are not displayed. Also, when you are typing in data, by default decimal places are not displayed. You may want to add decimal places to numbers that are shown as whole numbers or you may want the number you have typed to have decimal places. Here we will look at both options.

Option 1 – Use the Increase Decimal toolbar button 

Step 1 – Select the data 

• Select the column of numbers to be formatted in either of the following ways:
  • Click on the first cell of the column, hold down the left-click button on the mouse, and drag to the end of the column
  • Select the first cell of the column, hold down the Shift key and press the down arrow key till the last cell of the column is selected

Step 2 – Increase the decimal places

• Go to Home > Number
• Click the Increase Decimal button to increase the number of decimal places
• Each click will increase the decimal places by one number so to add 2 decimal places you need to click twice

Option 2 – Format the cells to display decimal places when typing

Step 1 – Select the range

• Select the range where you want decimal places to be added to the numbers in either of the following ways:
  • Click on the first cell of the column, hold down the left-click button on the mouse, and drag to the end of the column
  • Select the first cell of the column, hold down the Shift key and press the down arrow key till the last cell of the column is selected

Step 2 – Open the Format Cells window

• Right-click and select Format Cells  from the context menu

OR

Go to Home > Number  and click on the arrow to expand the menu

OR

Go to Home > Cells > Format > Format Cells

OR

Press Ctrl+1

Step 3 – Define the format

• On the Number tab, select the Number category
• Specify ‘2’ as the number of decimal places
• Click OK

Step 4 – Type in the numbers

• In the column, start typing the numbers
• The numbers will have 2 decimal places

Note 1: For numbers with decimal values you will have to type the decimal point, but decimals will be added to whole numbers as well

Note 2: This method can be used to add decimal places to an existing column of numbers as well