HP17BII+ New User’s Primer

The Hewlett Packard HP 17bII+ is a very easy to use financial calculator, which will serve you well in all finance courses and day-to-day usage. Before you get started, you need to set up the calculator.

Setup 1

The 17bII comes from the factory set to assume monthly compounding, but its better to set it to assume annual compounding and then make manual adjustments when you enter numbers. Why do we need to do this? The compounding assumption is hidden from view and people tend to forget to set it to the correct assumption. Also most accounting and finance textbook problems generally use 1 period / year. So we need to set this to once per year.

_ Press {FIN} (softkey - 1st key from the left, on the top row).

_ Press {TVM}

_ Press {OTHER}

_ Press 1

_ Then press {P / YR}

It should show 1 P / YR on the display. Press [Shift] yellow Key and [MAIN] Key.

Setup 2

Another common issue which sometimes occurs is that the calculator will accidentally get set to ‘Begin’ mode. You will need to have your calculator set to ‘End’ mode. If your calculator does accidentally get shifted into ‘Begin’ mode, the calculator’s display will say BEGIN below the numerals in the display. If it does not read anything,the calculator is in ‘End’ mode.

_ Press {FIN} (softkey - 1st key from the left, on the top row).

_ Press {TVM}

_ Press {OTHER}

_ Press {END}

It should show END MODE on the display.

Setup 3

One other important adjustment, by default the calculator displays only two decimal places. It is probably better to set this to five decimal places.

_ Press the [DSP] key

_ And then press {FIX}

_ Enter 5

_ Press [INPUT]

Alternative is to leave it at two decimal places and press [Shift] [SHOW] to display the calculated internal precision.

Setup 4

This is procedure to set the date and time on the calculator.

_ On the MAIN Menu, press {TIME} and follow by {SET}

_ Press {M/D} to set to British (Date/Month/Year) format

_ Press {12/24} to set to 12 hours format

_ Type in today’s date DD.MMYYYY (for example 25.122007) and press {DATE}

_ Type in time HH.MM (for example 13.55) and press {TIME}

Ok, the calculator is ready to go.

Just two other things, to adjust the contrast of the calculator, with the Calculator turned on, press and hold down the [ON] key and then use [+] to [-] to adjust display contrast. To Switch the calc between RPN and Algebraic Modes. Press [Shift] yellow Key and [MODES] Key, the screen should display ‘SELECT MODE’ press {RPN} softkey (5th key on the top row).