I know there is probably a simple answer to this, but I have a spreadsheet
that someone else created. In that sheet there are various formulas and 1
column is based on the difference of 2 other columns. The question is about
the column that has the total, if the total is $0 is does not show up, but if
I hightlight several of the cells you can see there are zeros, almost like
the font color is white. There are several cells that I had to change the
formula and now the $0 always show up. How do I make them invisible like the
other cells.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Look in Format/ Cells to see whether you've got a custom format
like#,##0;[Red]-#,##0;[White]General
Otherwise, look at Format/ Conditional Formatting.
Either way, you can probably use Format Painter to transfer the format to
your cells that need it.
--
David Biddulph

"pford" wrote in message
...
I know there is probably a simple answer to this, but I have a spreadsheet
that someone else created. In that sheet there are various formulas and 1
column is based on the difference of 2 other columns. The question is
about
the column that has the total, if the total is $0 is does not show up, but
if
I hightlight several of the cells you can see there are zeros, almost like
the font color is white. There are several cells that I had to change the
formula and now the $0 always show up. How do I make them invisible like
the
other cells.

Any help is greatly appreciated

This one's easy. In fact I can think of two ways:

1) There's a checkbox under Tools, Options, on the View tab, by which you
can control IN GENERAL the display of zero values. Go to that tab and look
in the bottom section entitled "Window options"; you can check or uncheck the
box labeled "Zero values". If it's checked, zero values are displayed; you
can uncheck it so that by default zero cells don't show up.

2) However, in my experience it won't be long before you need some cells to
show zero values and some not to. For that you need to use the custom-format
feature.

Select the cell(s) whose display format you want to change. Then from the
menu bar select Format,Cells. The various tabs are worth learning, but for
now we'll stick with the Number tab. Here again, the various categories are
worth exploring, but to force Excel to display (or not display) zero values
you'll need to go to the last category, labeled "Custom". Select that
category.

Your spreadsheet already has a number of custom formats listed that you can
select from, but you can make your own too. You should look in your Excel
help for more information on the exact syntax for specifying a format, but
what you need to know in this case is that the formats consist of up to four
character strings separated by semicolons. The first string indicates the
format to be used if the value is a positive number; the second if negative;
the third if zero; the fourth if a character string.

Let's assume you don't want to do anything else with the format, just use
the default "General" format. In that case start with the word "General"; if
you don't supply anything else, that applies four all four cases (positive,
negative, zero and text) so it's just like selecting the General category
from the list at the left. But you want to do something special if it's
zero, so fill it in like this:

General;-General;

The first format, "General", applies to positive numbers. The second,
"-General", applies to negative, and by the way if you leave out the minus
sign then negative numbers in these cells will appear without the sign! If
you stopped at that point, without entering the second semicolon, I think
"-General" would apply to the remaining two cases too, but as it is the
semicolon after the second format indicates that there is a third format
coming.

But there IS no third format specification, which causes Excel not to
display a zero value. And that's what you want, right?

--- "pford" wrote:
I have a spreadsheet that someone else created. In that sheet there are
various formulas and 1 column is based on the difference of 2 other columns.
The question is about the column that has the total, if the total is $0 is
does not show up, but if I hightlight several of the cells you can see there
are zeros, almost like the font color is white. There are several cells that
I had to change the formula and now the $0 always show up. How do I make them
invisible like the other cells?