Sure. Copy the data from the public spreadsheet (at a time when no one has it open and might modify it before you paste the corrected data back in!) into your spreadsheet in some convenient place. If it is a spreadsheet you use only for this purpose, or one you just open New, do the work, then close without ever saving, that'd be best: either of those two choices.
Once it is there with all the decimal places it came with, write a formula in a column nearby like the following:
=ROUND( DATA, 2)
ROUND()
will change each value to two decimal places in the same manner Excel uses when choosing how to display it showing only two decimal places.
Copy the cell down matching the column of data you copied in. You now have a column of values rounded to two decimal places that matches the displayed values in the public spreadsheet.
Copy that range of cells. Go back to the public spreadsheet and Paste | Special | Values
overtop the original data cells. They are now replaced with the same value that Excel was showing.
If you aren't familiar with Paste | Special | Values
, there are many ways to make it happen, but the easiest is to use a shortcut key combination. I use a different one that is hard to explain here, but for many years used Alt-E-S-V
, then pressing Enter
. ANY way you know how to do it though, the end result is happiness.
You still have the original values in the throwaway spreadsheet so take a quick look that nothing funky happened. If it all looks good, save it and then close the throwaway spreadsheet. If it looks funky though, try to figure out why, but then either just close the public spreadsheet WITHOUT saving (you can always start completely over, eh?), press Ctrl-Z
, or copy the original data back over the stuff you just pasted in. Three good ways to make sure an unhappy bit of work goes away leaving you the original.
The key is that you are willing, as you say above, to do the "copy it over, fix it, copy it back" work. If something makes that impossible (like... the public spreadsheet is never closed by all possible users for long enough for you to do this), then this method won't work.
ROUND
function.Precision as Displayed
, but his will permanently reduce precision throughout the entire workbook.