Indian Number Format in Excel: Lakhs and Crores

📘 Excel for India Course · Lesson 1 of 7

Excel groups digits in thousands (1,234,567). Indian reports group them as 12,34,567. You can get this two ways.

Option 1: Windows region setting

If your Windows region is English (India), the standard “Number” format with “Use 1000 separator” already shows 12,34,567. The catch: the file looks different on a colleague’s laptop set to another region.

Option 2: a custom format that works everywhere

Select the cells → Ctrl+1 → Custom → paste:

[>=10000000]##\,##\,##\,##0;[>=100000]##\,##\,##0;##,##0

It reads as: above 1 crore use crore grouping, above 1 lakh use lakh grouping, otherwise normal. Add a ₹ in front if you like: [>=10000000]"₹"##\,##\,##\,##0;[>=100000]"₹"##\,##\,##0;"₹"##,##0.

Amounts in lakhs or crores

Lakhs:   =ROUND(A2/100000,2)            → 12.35
Crores:  =ROUND(A2/10000000,2)          → 0.12
Label:   =TEXT(A2/100000,"0.00")&" L"   → 12.35 L

For dashboards, a custom format avoids changing the value: 0.00,,"M" works for millions, but there is no comma trick for lakhs — divide in a helper column instead.

Number to words

Excel has no built-in “rupees in words” function. Two options: a LAMBDA in Name Manager (see our LAMBDA library course), or a small VBA function. Either way, always test 0, 1,00,000, 10,00,00,000 and paise like 1,234.50.