# Excel question: eliminating decimals

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-eliminating-decimals/374124>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 25, 2006, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-eliminating-decimals/374124 "2006-09-25T21:17:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-eliminating-decimals/374124/1 "2006-09-25T21:17:47Z")

</div>

Couldn’t find anything in the help files, and you guys have helped me before.

I want one cell in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to copy the value of another cell, but eliminating the decimals without rounding. If cell C12 contains 5, 5.25, 5.5 or 5.75, I want cell E16 to contain 5.

Is there a way to do that?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-eliminating-decimals/374124/2 "2006-09-25T21:24:44Z")

</div>

Use the INT() function.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-eliminating-decimals/374124/3 "2006-09-25T21:27:03Z")

</div>

That’s simple enough. Enter the following formula into cell E16:

=ROUNDDOWN(C12,0)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-eliminating-decimals/374124/4 "2006-09-25T22:29:06Z")

</div>

While ROUNDDOWN does a great job of letting you specify precision  
_E.g._,  
A2 = 7.356  
B2 = 9.233  
C2 = =ROUNDDOWN((A2_B2), **2** ) gives 67.91 while  
=ROUNDDOWN((A2_B2), **3** ) _gives_ 67.917  
and  
=ROUNDDOWN((A2\*B2), **0** ) _gives_ 67  
and so on,

if you already know that it is specifically an integer you want in the answer, INT() takes several fewer keystrokes.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2006, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-question-eliminating-decimals/374124/5 "2006-09-25T22:40:41Z")

</div>

If the original number can be negative, it might be better to use TRUNC(x) (or ROUNDDOWN(x,n), but that requires more keystrokes).

INT(-5.2) = -6  
TRUNC(-5.2) = -5