I'm not raining on your idea. And, in fact, I deal with percentages all the
time, but I don't use red to denote negative percent. When I refer to a
percent it is a percentage increase, or a percentage decrease. What I am
saying is, once you add a custom format to your workbook, there it is, it is
just under a different selection. What you consider commonplace, or a
no-brainer, someone else never even uses. The fact is, if they were to try to
include a format for every possible situation that everyone that uses excel
considers fundamental, it would make excel so large as to be ridiculous. If
you don't know how to add a 'single' custom format to your workbook, and
heck, even create a button macro that will automatically apply it to the
current selection, then ask for that kind of help here and I am sure someone
will come up with a solution for you (and, in fact, if you search, you might
find just that kind of solution out here). But the simple fact is, don't
expect everyone to agree with you with what you think is a fundamental thing,
and others never even use.
--
** John C **
"Tschurin" wrote:
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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