Google Sheets Functions – ROUND, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN

In this post we’re going to have a quick look at rounding in Google Sheets, by using the ROUND, ROUNDUP, and ROUNDDOWN functions.

The syntax is very easy, we tell the function the number we want to round and then to how many decimal places.

In cell A1 we have a number and in B2 we want to reduce it to just 2 decimal places. In cell B2 we write =ROUND(A1,2), this gets the number in cell A1 and then converts it to 2 decimal places.

=ROUND(A1,2)

In the examples below we can see how the same formula treats numbers that are 0.5 or higher or less than 0.5. If the number is half or more it will round the number up, so 3.56 becomes 3.6, if we’re working to 1 decimal place. If the number is less than half, it will round it down, so 3.14 becomes 3.1.

=ROUND(A3,1)

We can control whether we want it to round up or down. To always round it up, we use the ROUNDUP function in the same way as before. As you can see, it’s rounded both figures up this time.

=ROUNDUP(A6,1)

To always round down, we use the ROUNDDOWN function in the same way:

=ROUNDDOWN(A9,1)

If you want to round whole numbers up, for example, to the nearest thousand, use a negative number. Here, I’m rounding to the nearest thousand, by adding a -3.

=ROUND(A12,–3)

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