No. You could put

=TEXT(A1,"#,##0;(#,##0)")

in another cell, but isn't this just as confusing?

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

"Louise" wrote in message
...
Good afternoon all

I have a colleague who is extremely new to Excel and when he types a
negative value into a cell, he wants it to show brackets rather than the
minus sign. I realise this can be done by applying a Custom Number
Format,
however, as he is a complete beginner with Excel, I have a feeling this
will
be too confusing for him.

Is there another way that he can apply this formatting rather than setting
up a custom number format?

Thank you.

Louise