Excel desperately needs new decimal buttons

Excel’s decimal buttons are a thing of mystery.

Sat snugly in the centre of the Home tab, they provide a quick and convenient way to adjust the number of decimal places a number has.

Well, that’s assuming you know which order they’re in. For many of us, it’s like playing Russian roulette trying to guess which button does what, given Increase Decimal and Decrease Decimal are on the left and right, respectively.

The problem is broader than this, though.

I posted recently about the curious inconsistency of button positioning in Excel, making the point that we’re accustomed to having the negative action on the left and the positive on the right. This UI principle applies to indent and zoom, so why not font size and decimals?

Positioning aside, just have a look at the two buttons. Do they make any sense to you?

I’ve spent a lot of time staring at them, but I still struggle to decipher what they mean.

It’s not helped by the fact each one is explained with zeros and decimal points across two lines, with a little blue arrow pointing in the opposite direction to what you’d expect.

Any good icon should be easy to understand — these certainly are not.

In contrast, Google Sheets is spot on. Its equivalent icons accurately depict what’s happening and are immediately comprehensible.

If you select Decrease decimal places, you are reducing the number of digits after the decimal point, as opposed to adding more with Increase decimal places. So, the arrow directions make perfect sense.

Is there any explanation?

There’s no official word, but I’ve come up with my own ludicrous explanation.

When you select Increase Decimal, you are not moving the decimal point itself, but you are changing its relative position. This means it’s further to the left when the total character length is considered.

For example:

(Decimal point character position/total characters)

12.6 (3/4)
12.56 (3/5)
12.560 (3/6)
12.5600 (3/7)
12.56000 (3/8)

Who on earth thinks about it this way, though?

Given they’re relics of the distant past, sometimes I wonder who designed the decimal buttons. They first appeared in the toolbar in 1993 after the launch of Excel 5.0; however, UI and UX designers weren’t so prominent during this era.

Without casting aspersions, was a mathematician asked for advice? After all, if you’ve ever dealt with formulas and equations, you’ll jolly well know symbols like Σ, ∫, and ∂ make perfect sense to the average Joe and Jane. 🙄

Anyway, it’s time for common sense. Please, Excel — take a leaf out of Sheets’ book and change those blimming buttons…