With a cell that is displaying something like (-23.78) as you active cell:
Use format | Cell and open the customise tab and you see you have something
like
#,##0.00;(-#,##0.00)
Edit this to read
#,##0.00;(#,##0.00) ' I have deleted the negative sign
Use this cell with Format Painter (look like paint brush) to format another
cells
best wishes
--
Bernard V Liengme
Microsoft Excel MVP
http://people.stfx.ca/bliengme
remove caps from email

"xlouisedoll" wrote in message
...
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!