Hex2bin function

This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the HEX2BIN function in Microsoft Excel.

Description

Converts a hexadecimal number to binary.

Syntax

HEX2BIN(number, [places])

The HEX2BIN function syntax has the following arguments:

• Number    Required. The hexadecimal number you want to convert. Number cannot contain more than 10 characters. The most significant bit of number is the sign bit (40th bit from the right). The remaining 9 bits are magnitude bits. Negative numbers are represented using two's-complement notation.

• Places    Optional. The number of characters to use. If places is omitted, HEX2BIN uses the minimum number of characters necessary. Places is useful for padding the return value with leading 0s (zeros).

Remarks

• If number is negative, HEX2BIN ignores places and returns a 10-character binary number.

• If number is negative, it cannot be less than FFFFFFFE00, and if number is positive, it cannot be greater than 1FF.

• If number is not a valid hexadecimal number, HEX2BIN returns the #NUM! error value.

• If HEX2BIN requires more than places characters, it returns the #NUM! error value.

• If places is not an integer, it is truncated.

• If places is nonnumeric, HEX2BIN returns the #VALUE! error value.

• If places is negative, HEX2BIN returns the #NUM! error value.

Example

Copy the example data in the following table, and paste it in cell A1 of a new Excel worksheet. For formulas to show results, select them, press F2, and then press Enter. If you need to, you can adjust the column widths to see all the data.

Formula	Description	Result
=HEX2BIN("F", 8)	Converts hexadecimal F to binary, with 8 characters (4 zeros at beginning are "padding").	00001111
=HEX2BIN("B7")	Converts hexadecimal B7 to binary.	10110111
=HEX2BIN("FFFFFFFFFF")	Converts hexadecimal FFFFFFFFFF to binary.	1111111111