Take a look at "about custom formats" in XL Help, specifically spacing.
Including an underscore followed by a character causes the space
occupied by that character to be inserted, so one example would be:

Format/Cells/Number/Custom 0.00_);(0.00)

which would insert the width of a right paren after the positive number.




In article ,
Bushco wrote:

I have customised a number format in excel to bracket negative numbers.
However the numbers will not line up with the positive numbers in the same
column.

How do I change this? It is essential that they line up as I am producing
accounts for third parties.