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Ron Rosenfeld Ron Rosenfeld is offline
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Default Negative Numbers Have Positive Result

On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:30:01 -0700, Les wrote:

I'm using Excel 2007 and am having trouble getting the correct result of
(-14.05) for an equation containing subtraction of two negative numbers.

The Excel values a
B9 = - 450.00
F9 = - 400.00
C11 = 7.12

Using the above values, the equation formula should work like this:
= 2*(- 450.00 - - 400.00)/7.12 (note the subtracting of 2 negative numbers)
= 2*(-50)/7.12
= - 100/7.12
= - 14.05

I've setup Excel as: 2*(B9-F9)/C11 but the result always comes out as a
positive 14.05 instead of negative (- 14.05). I've formatted the cell for
Numbers and selected the negative format using the hyphen.

Any ideas? I'm just stumped.

Les


Perhaps the cell in which your formula is located is formatted to show negative
numbers as positive. Or there is a formatting issue with one of the data
cells. (I get -14.0449 using your formula and your data as you report it here.

Try Format/Cells/Number/General
--ron