Warnings Excel will only produce binary numbers with up to 10 bits. This means that it can only convert decimal numbers greater than -513 and less than 512.

The number 7100 would require at least two bytes as in the example above. Binary numbers are calculated faster than decimal (BCD) numbers.

Also, because Visual Basic represents decimal variables internally as base-10 and not binary numbers, they resolve calculations involving decimal fractions more accurately than with floating point.

The Babylonians used separate combinations of two symbols to represent every single number from 1 to 59. That sounds pretty confusing, doesn’t it? Our decimal system seems simple by comparison ...