How to Round Up to the Nearest Whole Number in Excel

Sometimes numbers with high precision can cause confusion and may look ugly. Decreasing precision and decimal points in Excel can be done through rounding.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to round numbers up to the nearest whole number and also to the nearest multiples. This way, your data will be much more organized, and you won’t lose the significance of your numbers.  

Round Up by Changing Cell Format

If you want to round up a number in place, you can do so by changing the cell format by decreasing the number of decimal places. Let’s do it!

Step 1: Click on the cell that contains a number.

Step 2: Go to the Number Format box in the Excel Ribbon, and click on the Decrease Decimal button.

Every click on the button will decrease one decimal while rounding the number up.

Step 3: Keep on pressing until the number rounds to the nearest whole number.

Round Up Using ROUNDUP

There are some very useful functions in Excel that enable you to round numbers with different precisions. The ROUNDUP function is very commonly and easily used. Let’s look at how to use the ROUNDUP function to round numbers up.

The ROUNDUP function takes two arguments: a number, and the number of digits:

=ROUNDUP(num, num_of_digits)

• The argument num: You can use a number or the name of a cell that contains a number.
• The argument num_of_digits:
  • num_of_digits = 0:  the number is rounded up to the nearest whole number.
  • num_of_digits = 1:  the number is rounded up to 1 decimal place.
  • num_of_digits = 2:  the number is rounded up to 2 decimal places.

=ROUNDUP(A2, 0)

Change the second argument according to your needs:

Round Up to the Nearest 10, 100, 1000           

The ROUNDUP function can also be used to round up to the nearest multiple of 10, 100, and 1000. The only thing you need to change is the number of digits argument:

Change the second argument of the ROUNDUP function(num_of_digits):

• num_of_digits = -1:  the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 10.  
• num_of_digits = -2:  the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 100.  
• num_of_digits = -3:  the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 1000.  

Round Up Using CEILING

The CEILING function is very handy because you can round a number up to any nearest multiple. Let’s first learn how to use the CEILING function to round up to the nearest whole number.

The CEILING function also takes two arguments:

=CEILING(num, multiple_num)

• The argument num: You can use a number or the name of a cell that contains a number.
• The argument multiple_num: The multiple you want to round up nearest to.
  • multiple_num = 1: the number is rounded up to the nearest whole number.

=CEILING(A2, 1)

Round Up to the Nearest 0.25, 2.5 and 25

You can use the CEILING function to round up to the nearest multiple of 0.25, 2.5, and 25. This comes in handy if you’re working with quarters.

Simply change the second argument of the CEILING function (multiple_num):

• multiple_num = 0.25: the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 0.25.  
• multiple_num = 2.5: the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 2.5.  
• multiple_num = 25: the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 25.  

Round Up to the Nearest 0.5, 5, 50           

You can also use the CEILING function to round up to the nearest halves (0.5, 5, 50) by changing the second argument of the CEILING function (multiple_num):

• multiple_num = 0.5: the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 0.5 (the nearest half).  
• multiple_num = 5: the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 5.  
• multiple_num = 50: the number is rounded up to the nearest multiple of 50.  

Moving decimal places to the left or right can also help. Convert the decimal to a percentage afterward if needed.

In this tutorial, we learned how to round up to the nearest whole number, and the nearest multiples by changing the cell format, or by using the ROUNDUP and CEILING functions. Nice job!