Consider this: you’ve asked someone for a spreadsheet listing prices, but they’ve sent a list of numbers with no dollar signs included. How can you correct this quickly? Fortunately, it’s easy to do right inside of Excel. Let’s learn how to use DOLLAR in Microsoft Excel.
How to Use DOLLAR in Excel
23. 525. 1047.385. What do these values have in common? At a glance, not very much. But imagine they’re part of your price list, but they don’t have dollar values assigned. What’s more, 1047.385 isn’t really a valid price as expressed in dollars and cents. You need to round it up to $1,047.39.
This is where the DOLLAR function in Excel comes in. DOLLAR can instantly process lengthy lists, converting them to dollar values and rounding to a chosen number of decimals. To begin, click into any empty cell in your workbook. For simplicity, let’s use cell D1 here.
Then, type an = sign. This tells Excel that you’re inputting a formula into the cell that you have selected. Continue by inserting the DOLLAR function:
=DOLLAR(
Excel now asks for two inputs: the number, and the number of decimals that you wish to display. For the number itself, you can simply click into the cell containing the value that you want to convert to a dollar value. Here, this is cell C1. Type a comma, and then input the number of decimals. Let’s use 2 here:
=DOLLAR(C1,2)
Hit Enter on your keyboard, and Excel will return the value $23.00 in cell D1. Notice that the original value is preserved in cell C1.
From here, you can copy the formula downward into cells D2 and D3. These cells will now display $525.00 and the rounded value of $1,047.39.
As you can see, Excel’s DOLLAR function helps you quickly convert numbers into dollar values.
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