That was simple. After all these years with Excel I admit I've never noticed
the red option in the standard numbers format box! Thanks.

"bpeltzer" wrote:

Negative red numbers are a feature of many of the standard formats. Try
Cells Format, click on the Numbers tab and take a look. You can easily
choose whether negative numbers should have parentheses, red font, etc.

"ArthurJ" wrote:

I have a spreadsheet that came from someone else. Some of the cells contain a
simple subtraction formula (+B3-B2). The font color turns red if the result
is negative. I assumed this was conditional formatting. I want to turn it
off. But when I open the conditional format box for that cell, there is no
formatting set up. A message in the box states "No format set" and there are
no decision rules at all.

I looked in the normal format box for these cells, but I see nothing out of
the ordinary. The font color is set for "automatic".

Art