Highlight the cells you want to change and hit CTRL+1. On the menu that pops
up, choose 'Number' from the left, then on the right you'll see the format
you want in a list.

"xlouisedoll" wrote:

Right this is probably going to sound really silly..but I'm not very good
with Excel. Basically..I'm an accounting student and for one of my classes
I've got to produce a balance sheet etc etc. but I'm having problems with the
formatting of my cells for negative numbers. Basically rather than them
showing up as a - (say -2) I want brackets around the number (2), but
whenever I try and do this..it just converts to -2...any ideas on how I get
it to stay as (2) without changing the format of the cells to just text? i.e.
so it still means negative 2?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!