BIN2HEX in Excel: Convert Binary Fields and Preserve Signed Values

• Introduced: the first introduction version is not established by the reviewed official history.
• Availability: official help lists Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel for Microsoft 365 for Mac, Excel 2024, Excel 2024 for Mac, Excel 2021, Excel 2021 for Mac, Excel 2019, Excel 2016.
• Checked: October 14, 2026; official BIN2HEX reference. Documentation and independent models; no native Excel execution or wider platform certification.

=BIN2HEX(number,[places])

The binary input has at most ten characters and uses ten-bit two’s complement. Its signed interval is −512 through 511. An invalid binary representation or more than ten input characters produces documented #NUM! behavior.

The optional places argument controls the nonnegative output width. Too few places produces #NUM!; fractional places is truncated, nonnumeric places produces #VALUE!, and negative places produces #NUM!. The reference does not separately resolve zero places or every invalid-argument combination.

For negative inputs, the output is ten hexadecimal characters and places is ignored. Ten input binary bits and ten output hexadecimal characters are different widths: the latter represents forty bits. The signed quantity is preserved by extending its negative representation, not by simply grouping the original ten bits into short hex.

Format A2:A6 as Text and enter these strings. Put =BIN2HEX(A2) in B2 and =BIN2HEX(A2,4) in C2; fill both down.

Only the first table column is input data. The Decimal check column is explanatory and is not pasted into B; put calculated outputs in the worksheet cells specified above.

For 101101, group the positive bits from the right as 0010 1101. These groups represent 2 and 13, giving 2D. For 100000001, padding the illustration to 0001 0000 0001 gives 101.

That grouping check works for these nonnegative inputs. It must not replace the signed conversion rule for a full ten-bit negative input.

The binary quantities are −1, −3 and −512. An independent forty-bit encoding adds 2^40 to each negative quantity before converting the resulting unsigned value to ten hex positions.

Simply grouping 1111111111 as an unsigned binary number would give 3FF, which is positive 1023. That would change the quantity rather than convert its signed representation. Use BIN2DEC and HEX2DEC to inspect the signed decimal meaning on both sides.

A valid width such as 4 does not shorten a negative output: =BIN2HEX("1111111101",4) still gives FFFFFFFFFD. This example does not certify how an invalid width interacts with a negative input.

Keep the first table in A2:C6. In D2 use =BIN2DEC(A2) and in E2 use =HEX2DEC(C2), then fill down. Both columns return 10, 45, 240, 257 and 511.

In F2 enter =D2=E2 and fill down. All five comparisons are TRUE. This checks preservation of the quantity while the display base and padded width change.

For a reverse conversion, =HEX2BIN(C2,10) yields a ten-position binary field. On the first row the result is 0000001010, which has the same quantity as the original 1010 but a different text width. HEX2BIN cannot recover an original width that was not retained.

If a downstream file requires the exact original character count, keep A or store that count separately. A numeric round-trip and a character-for-character round-trip are different tests.

=BIN2HEX("101101",4.9) uses truncated width 4 and produces 002D. =BIN2HEX("100000001",2) needs three hexadecimal positions and follows the documented #NUM! rule.

=BIN2HEX("102") contains an invalid binary digit. An eleven-character string such as 00000000001 also exceeds the stated input width, even though its positional value would be small.

Use DEC2HEX when the source is already a decimal integer. The literal decimal quantity 45 and the binary text 101101 represent the same amount through different input contracts. Native text cleanup, locale effects and unspecified argument-error precedence were not executed here.

• Microsoft BIN2HEX reference.
• Editorial testing standards.

Expected outputs are independently calculated examples or documented rules, not captured native Excel results. Formulas use English function names and comma argument separators. Locale, rendering and boundary restrictions are stated where relevant.