want parentheses, not negative numbers

[hharder]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Processor: Power PC Hello,
I'm trying to make an aside comment at the bottom of a 2008 excel table and need my information for one cell to appear in parentheses, but the program keeps autopopulating it to be negative number.

Thanks for your help.

 

[CyberTaz]

Parens are standard formatting for negative values, they can't be used as
"literal" text characters in conjunction with numerical values. If you want
them to display rather than the minus sign use Format> Cells - Number &
select the paren example. Adjust the number of decimal places as necessary.
Just keep in mind that the value will be treated as a negative if the cell
is referred to in any calculations.

If the number isn't going to be used as a value you can either pre-format
the cell as Text (Format> Cells - Text) or you can type an apostrophe [ ' ]
as the first character in the cell [ '(nnnnn) ]. The apostrophe will not
display, it simply alows the number to be stored as text.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[hharder]

Thank you!