February 17, 2017

As part of a cookbook I’m editing I want to offer buyers an Excel spreadsheet that converts various weights and measures, just as one so often sees elsewhere. My question has to do with converting to fractions. How can I restrict the fraction of a number converted with a fractional part to to halves, thirds, quarters and eighths?

Cups, for example, are often expressed as halves (7.5 cups) or quarters (7.25 cups). But they are also expressed as thirds (7 1/3 cups). Indeed, the two liquid cup measures in my kitchen are both delineated into thirds as well as halves and quarters of a cup.

I need eighths because small amounts of a critical ingredient such as yeast could get rounded up to 0.25 or, worse, down to 0.

How in Excel can I restrict any number’s conversion only into halves, thirds, quarters and eighths?

Can this be done? Can Excel be forced into rendering numbers only to the nearest eighth or quarter or third or half (and integers, of course)? I’ve played around with this for a few hours, including a fair amount of online research, and I’m nowhere. The problem is that I’m a moron, so I’m hoping people on this forum who aren't can offer a solution or two.

In case it helps, one suggestion that I don't understand and cannot figure out how to implement in Excel but that does seem to work sometimes somehow involves the MOD(ulo) function. Another suggestion uses VBA.

Thanks to anyone who understands the problem and has some idea how to solve it.