Thanks for replies so far - both are helpful but neither answer my questions.

1 - where do I specify that for new worksheets, the default number of decimals when entering a number is 4? Sure I can create an xlt and then format all cells as numeric with 4 dps. This is not what I want as day-to-day usage of Excel does not necessarily require all cells to be numeric (ie. I still want Excel to convert 4/4 to a date).

1a - the "auto insert decimals" does not appear to work unless I'm doing something really silly. The scenario I described still happens - ie. Excel still only shows 3 decimals.

2 - neither my colleague or I are using any XLTs - neither of us have any files with .XLT extensions on our machines/network drives.

Please try both scenarios on your own versions of Excel and let me know if I'm missing something fundamental.

Cheers

Stu