have negative numbers appear in parenthesis

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Byrna West - 29 Oct 2007 14:27 GMT

How does one do this? I only see options for negative numbers to
appear with a (-) sign or in red. I prefer them in parenthesis
(Windows Excel allows this). Any suggestions?

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Art - 29 Oct 2007 15:10 GMT

> How does one do this? I only see options for negative numbers to
> appear with a (-) sign or in red. I prefer them in parenthesis
> (Windows Excel allows this). Any suggestions?

Byrna,
On Office X, those format options exist for both numeric and currency
styles (Format / Cells / Number command and Number or Currency category).

If they're not present on your version of Excel, you can recreate them.
There are templates under the "custom" category that you can use as a
starting point.

Art

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Fairgreen - 30 Oct 2007 14:26 GMT

> > How does one do this? I only see options for negative numbers to
> > appear with a (-) sign or in red. I prefer them in parenthesis
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
> Art

Yes, I'm familiar with custom categories. But, I'm unable to save
them for future reference. In other words, I have to recreate the
style each time it's required. How does one save it for future use?

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JE McGimpsey - 30 Oct 2007 15:40 GMT

> Yes, I'm familiar with custom categories. But, I'm unable to save
> them for future reference. In other words, I have to recreate the
> style each time it's required. How does one save it for future use?

Hmmm...

It appears in XL04 by default, and, IIRC, did so in XLv.X as well.

Since you don't see the format you want, create a fresh workbook, set a
cell or cells to the custom format (then change the cell(s) back to
General if desired), and save it as your default template (make any
other changes you want to save, too, such as fonts, number of
worksheets, column widths, etc.).

See the "Create a template for workbooks or worksheets" topic in Help
for more info.

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Fairgreen - 31 Oct 2007 16:51 GMT

> In article <1193750784.679147.266...@o38g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
>
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> See the "Create a template for workbooks or worksheets" topic in Help
> for more info.

hmmm. I'm not sure if this will work. If I create a template which
uses parenthesis for negatives, wouldn't it then revert to (-) when I
choose currency format? I need all numbers (currency, accounting,
numbers) to use parenthesis for negative..do you see what I mean?
shoudl I create a macro (which I've never done...so no sure how to...)

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JE McGimpsey - 29 Oct 2007 15:20 GMT

> How does one do this? I only see options for negative numbers to
> appear with a (-) sign or in red. I prefer them in parenthesis
> (Windows Excel allows this). Any suggestions?

MacXL allows this too...<g>

Choose Format/Cells/Number/Number, and choose the format you want from
the Negative numbers: listbox.

If you want a custom format, you can use Format/Cells/Number/Custom.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Excel / October 2007

have negative numbers appear in parenthesis