Why does Excel change 16 cents into .1599999 in a merge process

Have not had this problem until we upgraded to 2003?????

I have tried different cell formats in Excel
Number - currency - accounting - custom - all with the 2 decimal places

text - but rather not lose numeric functions
(am re-entering figures by hand and using text format today to finish
merged letters - - ugghhh!)

Help?

I have had a similar problem in previous versions of Excel as well, not just
Office 2003. Is the data in Excel coming from an outside source like a non
Microsoft database query?

I run into this problem often when I use MS Query to bring in data from an
education database known as SCT Banner. The answer I've received is that
it's because the two programs don't talk the exact same language. I've found
no resolution. The only workaround I've ever been successful with (and not
100% of the time at that) is to copy and paste the data into a new worksheet
so it drops the query information from the background.

"svlm" wrote:

Why does Excel change 16 cents into .1599999 in a merge process

Have not had this problem until we upgraded to 2003?????

I have tried different cell formats in Excel
Number - currency - accounting - custom - all with the 2 decimal places

text - but rather not lose numeric functions
(am re-entering figures by hand and using text format today to finish
merged letters - - ugghhh!)

Help?