Data Types in Excel

General

This data type includes most data that Excel encounters, including text, numbers, dates, and times. This is the default data type for new cells.

Text

This data type contains strings of text. This data type can include Unicode characters.

Number

This data type represents numeric values. Excel can automatically classify and store numbers in different formats, such as integers, decimals, fractions, and percentages.

Currency

This data type is used for representing currency values. Excel stores the value of the currency as a number, and it displays the value formatted as a currency.

Date

This data type represents dates. Excel stores dates as sequential serial numbers, where January 1, 1900, is considered Serial Number 1.

Time

This data type represents times. Microsoft Excel, however, stores times as a fraction of a given day.

Logical

This data type represents true/false values. In Excel, TRUE is represented by -1 and FALSE is represented by 0.

Error

This data type represents errors. In Excel, an error message is displayed if a formula cannot return a valid result.

Blank

This data type represents a cell with no data or formatting. Excel displays a completely blank cell if a formula evaluates to a zero-length string.

To find the data type of a cell, you can use the ISTYPE function. For example, to check if cell A1 contains a date, you can use the formula =ISTYPE(A1, 2). This will return TRUE if the data type of A1 is a date and FALSE otherwise.

In addition to the built-in data types, Excel allows you to create custom data types using Data Validation.

About Author

SURF

See author's posts