Greetings. I am using EXCEL 2003, and I am still struggling. I have a
column containing numbers, and some of the numbers (after calculations from
previous columns) have minus signs in front of them (e.g., 8, 6, -7, 4, -9,
3, -1, etc). I want to remove the minus signs from the numbers, and sort the
numbers so that is what they are -- just numbers. How do I do this? Thanks.

Select the range
edit|Replace
what: - (minus)
with: (leave blank)
replace all

If you really want to keep the values as-is, you can use a helper column of
cells with formulas like:

=abs(a1)

and drag down.

then select all the columns in the range to sort and sort by that helper column.

Rebecca wrote:

Greetings. I am using EXCEL 2003, and I am still struggling. I have a
column containing numbers, and some of the numbers (after calculations from
previous columns) have minus signs in front of them (e.g., 8, 6, -7, 4, -9,
3, -1, etc). I want to remove the minus signs from the numbers, and sort the
numbers so that is what they are -- just numbers. How do I do this? Thanks.

--

Dave Peterson

Assuming that the column containing the values with minus signs is column D,
and that row 1 contains headings.

In cell E2, enter the following worksheet function
=ABS(D2)

This returns the absolute value, removing - signs.
HTH
--
http://groups.msn.com/HighlandsVillage where Villagers help each other

"Rebecca" wrote:

Greetings. I am using EXCEL 2003, and I am still struggling. I have a
column containing numbers, and some of the numbers (after calculations from
previous columns) have minus signs in front of them (e.g., 8, 6, -7, 4, -9,
3, -1, etc). I want to remove the minus signs from the numbers, and sort the
numbers so that is what they are -- just numbers. How do I do this? Thanks.