They're just minus signs. By applying a unary minus operation to a
true/false, you force Excel to turn the booleans into numbers. By applying
the minus twice, you get back to a positive number.
So --(true) is 1; --(false) is 0.

"LPS" wrote:

Has anyone ever seen the use of "dashes" in functions or formulas before? I
have a user who has several instances where dashes have been used (someone
sent her the spreadsheet) and none of us have ever seen this before. An
example follows:

=SUMPRODUCT(--(F3:F838<121),--(E3:E838=1))

Any suggestions / explanations?
Thanks,
--
LPS