How to abbreviate large numbers as K and M
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Show 3,400,000 as "3.4M" — dashboards, charts, tight columns.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =TEXT(A2,"0.0,,""M""") | Each trailing comma divides the display by 1,000. As a cell format: 0.0,,"M" keeps the value numeric. |
| Google Sheets | =TEXT(A2,"0.0,,""M""") | Identical, including the custom-format route. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =TEXT(A2,"0.0,,""M""") | Identical. |
How it works
A comma at the END of a number format's digit section scales the display down by a thousand — two commas mean millions, so 3,400,000 renders as "3.4M". One comma with "K" does thousands. Applied as a custom cell format instead of TEXT, the cell still holds the real number for math while displaying short. For mixed magnitudes on one sheet (930K next to 1.2M), you need a conditional: =IF(A2>=1E6,TEXT(A2,"0.0,,""M"""),TEXT(A2,"0,""K""")).
Verified, not just documented
We ran =TEXT(A2,"0.0,,""M""") in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 3.4M — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned 3.4M for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.
Functions used
TEXT — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.
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