Why you see an "E" in numbers in Excel and what it means

If you have ever had a very long or very small number in Excel there have probably been times you’ve seen it showing with an “E” in the middle.

This is because the value in the cell is showing in the scientific notation.

What is the scientific notation

The scientific notation is a compressed way of showing a very large or very small number.

It splits the number into a base number and an exponent, which are separated by the letter “E”.

The 'E' stands for exponent and it represents multiplying the base number by 10 raised to the power of the exponent.

The base number is a decimal number, and the exponent tells you how many places to move the decimal number to the left or right.

For example, the number 320,000 would show as 3.2E+05 in the scientific notation.

This breaks down as:

• The base number is 3.2

• The exponent is E+05

• The positive exponent tells you to move the decimal point 5 places to the right

• Starting with 3.2 and moving the decimal point five places to the right would give you 320,000

Excel treats this number as the following calculation:

• 3.2E+05 means 3.2 * 10^5, or 320,000

  
  

The same logic can be applied to very small numbers.

The number 0.0051 would show as 5.1E-03 in the scientific format.

• The base number is 5.1

• The exponent is E-03

• The negative exponent tells you to move the decimal point three places to the left

• Starting with 5.1 and moving the decimal point three places to the left gives you 0.0051

This is calculated as:

• 1.5E-03 means 1.5 * 10^-3, or 0.0015.

Why does Excel use the scientific notation

Excel switches to scientific notation when a number is too large or too small to fit within the default number format or the cell’s width.

It helps keep the display compact and readable, especially when you’re dealing with numbers that might have dozens or hundreds of digits.

How to change this

If you don't want to see the scientific notation and would prefer to see the long or short number you can either change the number format or the column width.

To change the number format select the cell with the scientific notation in it and go to the Home tab and click the drop down in the number format box and select number format.

You can also right click on the cell and select Format Cells.

This will open up the Format Cells window where you can go to Number in the Category window on the side and select the number format and amount of decimal places you want to see.

If you change the cell to a number format and there are too many digits in the number to fit in the cell the number will display with the # sign.

This means the column is too narrow to display the full number. While you won't be able to see the actual number in the cell due to the column width the number is still there and can be used in forward calculations, the # sign is just an indicator that you need to increase the column width to accommodate the length of the number.

To do this you can move your mouse over the line between the column headers (the line between A, B, C etc) and double click. This will automatically resize the column to the width of the number.

Conclusion

The "E" that sometimes shows in numbers in Excel represents the exponent in the scientific notation.

This shows when a a very large or very small number is too big to fit in the cell it has been written in.

The number before the E represents the base number and the number after the E represents the exponent, which indicates how many places to the left or right you need to move the decimal to get back to the original number.

If you don't want to see numbers like this you can either change the format of the cell or increase the column width.