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Parentheses for negative numbers in Excel 2011

I couldn't find an appropriate section for this question. Please forgive me if I posted it in the wrong place.


I've been using Excel for Mac 2011 since it came out. Up until I updated to Yosemite, formatting negative numbers with parentheses appeared in the drop down menu, i.e., right click to get format cells, click "number" tab on top, click "number" on left. There is a dialog as to how you want negative numbers formatted. Parentheses used to be an option but no more. I attached a screen shot. Help!User uploaded file

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2.7GHz Quad, Core I5, 2x4GB

Posted on Oct 22, 2014 4:13 AM

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65 replies

Nov 20, 2014 7:03 AM in response to gsusser

Same issue here with Excel 2011, problem started with the Yosemite installation and was not fixed with 10.10.1 nor the latest Microsoft update.


It's a big problem for accountants!


On the Microsoft forum this gentleman replied with a workaround but it's a hassle to have to do this for each new spreadsheet.


JonathanBuhacoff replied on


If you go to the dialog shown in Phillip's post and select "Custom" on the left side, you can enter this to get the parenthesis back:


$#,##0;[Red](-$#,##0)



Or this to use square brackets:


$#,##0;[Red]"["-$#,##0"]"


The format means use $#,##0 for positive numbers and use [-$#,##0] in red for negative numbers.


You could remove the hyphen too and just do this:


$#,##0;[Red]"["$#,##0"]"


I hope Apple takes note and pushes a fix for us.

Parentheses for negative numbers in Excel 2011

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