Shane

Thanks for your help
Obviously I am not very knowledgeable about formatting or custom formatting
of cells.
I was able to just cut and paste your "code" and it seems to work fine.

I still don't necessarily agree that Excel 2007 should provide only one
prepared way to format percentage [for most other categories it provides
multiple options] but, as the saying goes, I'd rather find a solution than be
right.

Regards,
Geoff


"ShaneDevenshire" wrote:

Hi,

Before I delve in the question of why, lets answer the question of how:

1. Choose Format, Cells, Number tab, Custom and enter the following on the
Type line
0.00_);[Red](-0.00%)
If you want it to 2 decimal places.
2. Using Conditional Formatting you set up your basic format and then choose
Format, Conditional Formatting, choose less than from the second drop down,
enter 0 in the third box, click Format and on the Font tab set the Color to
Red.

Why - because that's how Microsoft programmed it. There are millions of
possible formats that people might want so Micrsoft decided to build some in
and leave others out. You can't please all the people all the time. You may
not remember Lotus 1-2-3 but you had to live with their built in formats -
you couldn't design any of your own, and the built in ones were, by present
day standards, very limited.

--
Thanks,
Shane Devenshire


"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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