Thanks, this worked, obviously it's bringing the value in as text. It's a
solution for after the fact but since this is an ongoing (daily) procedure I
was hoping to find a solution that didn't require additional formatting every
time data was pasted, but this may be the best that can be done.

"David Biddulph" wrote:

Data Text to Columns. Next Next Finish
--
David Biddulph

"dallas" wrote in message
...
On a previous pc where Excel 97 was upgraded to 2003 I was able to copy
numbers with a negative behind it eg 1564- from a mainframe application
and
paste it into Excel and it would automatically format it as a negative eg
red
(1564.00).
I have just got a new pc (with a clean install of 2003) and this no longer
works. It now pastes the original number eg 1564- as 1564-, i.e. it no
longer
recognises or formats it as a negative number.