Rounding Numbers Up in Google Spreadsheets

Decimals in your spreadsheets can either be great or an eyesore, depending on where they appear. While it's a good idea to retain as many decimal places as possible to keep your calculations accurate, you may not want to display a number eight decimal places deep as the final result.

Google Sheets has a convenient Roundup function that lets you control how many decimal places it displays and automatically clean up your numbers.

The image to below displays examples and gives explanations for a number of results returned by Google Spreadsheets' ROUNDUP function for data in column A of the worksheet. The results, shown in column C, depend upon the value of the count argument - more information below.

A function's syntax refers to the layout of the function and includes the function's name, brackets, and arguments.

The syntax for the ROUNDUP function is:

= ROUNDUP ( number, count )

The arguments for the function are:

number - (required) the value to be rounded

• This argument can contain the actual data for rounding or it can be a cell reference to the location of the data in the worksheet.

count - (optional) the number of decimal places to leave

• if the count argument is omitted, the function rounds the value up to the nearest integer
• if the count argument is set to 1, for example, the function leaves only one digit to the right of the decimal point and rounds it up to the next number
• if the count argument is negative, all decimal places are removed and the function rounds up that number of digits to the left of the decimal point upward
  • for example, if the value of the count argument is set to -1, the function will remove all digits to the right of the decimal point and round the first digit to the left of the decimal point up to 10 - example 3 in the image above
  • if the value of the count argument is set to -2, the function will remove all digits to the right of the decimal point and round the first and second digits to the left of the decimal point up to 100 - example 5 in the image above

The ROUNDUP Function:

• is used to reduce a value by a specific number of decimal places or digits;
• will always round the rounding digit upward;
• alters the value of the data in the cell - unlike formatting options that allow you to change the number of decimal places displayed without actually changing the value in the cell;
• affects the results of calculations due to this change in data.
• always rounds away from zero. Negative numbers, even though they are decreased in value by the function, are said to be rounded up (examples 4 and 5 in the image above).

As seen in the image above, this example will use the ROUNDUP function to reduce the number in cell A1 to two decimal places. In addition, it will increase the value of the rounding digit by one.

To show the effect rounding numbers has on calculations, both the original number and the rounded one will then be multiplied by 10 and the results compared.

Enter the following data into the designated cells.

Cell Data 
 A1 - 242.24134
 B1 - 10

Google Spreadsheets does not use dialog boxes to enter a function's arguments as can be found in Excel. Instead, it has an auto-suggest box that pops up as the name of the function is typed into a cell.

In the image above, the value in cell C1 has been formatted to display only three digits to make the number easier to read.

The different formula results in cells C1 and C2 - 2,422.413 vs. 2,422.50 shows the effect rounding numbers can have on calculations, which can be a significant amount in certain circumstances.