Trevor,

Thanks for the help!

Les

"Trevor Shuttleworth" wrote:

Les

if the answer you are looking for is -5.52 then the formula should be:

=C8-C9

The fact that you are seeing 0 in the SUM option implies that the numbers
are not actually numbers but text that looks like numbers. Are they left
aligned or right aligned in the cells ? If they're left aligned, the
chances are they're text masquerading as numbers.

=C8-C9 should force a numeric evaluation anyway. If it doesn't, format the
cells as General or number and re-enter the values ... that should prove the
point.

Regards

Trevor


"Les" wrote in message
...
Trevor,

Thanks for the quick response. I tried both your suggestions but
unfortunately the results are not

The first example =SUM(C8,F8) returns the value of 0.00

The second example =C8+F8 returns the #VALUE syntax.

Just to clarify, the values I'm working with are -4424.80 (for C8) and
-4,419.28. So the correct answer should be -5.52.
(-4424.80 - -4,419.28).
Somehow I can't get Excel to recognize the negative values even though I
formatted the cells as "Numbers" and selected the negative number format.

I appreciate the help.

Les

"Trevor Shuttleworth" wrote:

Try:

=SUM(C8,F8)

or just:

=C8+F8

The SUM is actually redundant here. You're just trying to *add* two
negative numbers, not taking one away from the other.

Regards

Trevor


"Les" <Les @discussions.microsoft.com wrote in message
...
Hi~
I'm using Excel 2007 and ran into a problem when creating a formula
that
references two cells (C8 and F8) where users will enter a negative
number
in
each cell. So for example, the user would enter the following numbers:

Cell C8 ------ -4424.872
Cell F8 ------- -4278.982

To subtract both numbers I created the formula: SUM(C8-F8). But the
problem is that instead of returning a negative number, the result is
shown
as a positive number. I'm not sure why this happening. Could someone
point
me in the right direction?

Thanks for the time and expertise!