Microsoft Excel use typically goes hand-in-hand with data entry. When you are doing a lot of data entry, you start to look for any possible way to make it go a little faster. So if you are entering a lot of numbers with decimal points, the ability to prevent yourself from needing to type the decimal point can be very helpful. Microsoft Excel 2010 has a feature that will automatically insert a decimal point before a number of digits that you specify.
Automatic Decimal Points in Excel 2010
We will be automatically inserting a decimal point before the last two digits of a number in the tutorial below. This is the preferred option for people that are entering monetary amounts, and is the default option in Excel. However, you can adjust this setting to a different number of decimal places if you so choose.
Step 1: Open Microsoft Excel 2010.
Step 2: Click the File tab at the top-left corner of the window.
Step 3: Click Options in the column at the left of the window.
Step 4: Click Advanced in the left column of the Excel Options window.
Step 5: Check the box to the left of Automatically insert a decimal point. You will notice that the default value is 2, but you can change this to something else if you wish.
Step 6: Click the OK button at the bottom-right of the window to save your changes and close the window. Now when you type a number into one of the cells in your spreadsheet, then decimal point will automatically be inserted.
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Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.
His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.
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