John

I'm not sure why you are raining on this idea. You say it is "easy enough to
do;" if you deal with a dozen charts a day with rows of negative percentages
then "easy enough to do" becomes a time wasting chore. Besides:
1) This suggestion is consistent with what excel already does with other
numbers
2) improves the legibility of percentages and thus makes it less likely that
someone might make a mistake reading percentage numbers
3) It's not like it would be terribly complicated.
You say that custom numbers provide "good flexibility." For negative numbers
you don't need a lot of flexibility; red is the accepted color for negative
numbers.
You say the list is for more "basic uses." How much more basic can a
negative percent be; for the sake of discussion we can assume a percentage
change has just as much a chance of being negative, as of being positive.
Some of the suggestions you say you would like may in fact be good. Push
those ideas, instead of raining on others peoples' ideas.

Geoff



"John C" wrote:

Custom number format is easy enough to do.... Why can't I have an automatic
choice for fractions with up to 4 digits in the denominator? up to 5 digits?
Why not a date format of mm/dd/yyyy as a default choice instead of doing
customs....The custom provides good flexibility, and the lists are the more
'basic' uses... Just my 2 cents.
--
** John C **

"Tschurin" wrote:

I understand from looking at past threads that there is a way to
conditionally format a negative percent so that it is red.

But why isn't that a choice automatically provided by Excel?

When you format a cell with a number in it, you are given a choice to format
a negative number in black or red, with or without a parenthesis around the
number.

Why shouldn't you have the option of formatting a negative percentage in
red, with or without parentheses. Red with parentheses is much easier to read
than the thin negative sign to the left in black. At least one should have
the option.

Geoff

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