Entering Stock Prices in Lotus 1-2-3

Stock prices are typically given in terms of whole dollar amounts and a fraction, e.g., 61 5/16.

To enter the value in Lotus 1-2-3, you could key in 61+5/16 and press Enter. The value 61.3125 would appear in the target cell.

Here's another way to do the same thing. The advantage is that you can always see the fractional amount and the decimal equivalent.

Here's how to do this.

In a blank worksheet, press MENU Range Format Currency 0 and press Enter. Set the range to A1..A20 and press Enter. Use MENU Range Format Text, press Enter and set the range as B1..B20.

In cell C1 enter the formula +A1+B1 and then use MENU Copy A1 to A2..A20.

To enter stock values, just put the whole dollar amount in column A and the fractional amount in the B column. The decimal equivalent will appear in the cell in column C.

The trick involves setting column B to Text format. It might seem that you're adding a number to "text" but that isn't the case. In Lotus-speak, "text" means "view the underlying formula as a label rather than as a number."

This seldom used formatting command (MENU Range Format Text) comes in handy when debugging a worksheet. With a couple of macros you can toggle the text and value display of a range of cells. To see how this might work, enter the following macros in cells E2 and E4:

'/RFF2~B1..B20~ and '/RFTB1..B20~

Use the command MENU Range Name Create \N and assign the range name to cell E2. Use MENU Range Name Create \F and assign the range name to cell E4. When you press ALT+F and ALT+N you'll toggle the display of values in the range B1..B20.