Precede it by a single apostrophe

'+

--

HTH

Bob Phillips

(replace xxxx in the email address with gmail if mailing direct)

"johnny vino" wrote in message
...
I am having an odd problem.

I want to populate cells with + or -, but Excel assumes I'm writing a
formula and won't allow to just put the character in the cell (unless I
hit
the spacebar once first, and I don't want to do that)

Is there a formatting setup that's causeing this? I've searched in vain.