I am developing a spreadsheet to replace a paper based cashbook and VAT day
book.
I am reliably informed that in accounting a negative number should be
identified by placing it in parenthesis,
I understand that a negative number can be entered by enclosing it in
parenthesis but as soon as I change to the next cell or press enter the
parenthesis disappear and a minus sign precedes the number.
When printed out the minus sign is quite small and may easily be missed, I
cannot find any way to do this using the custom number formats within excel
but feel that it should be possible by adapting one of the existing custom
formats.
The office where the spreadsheet will be used only has a mono laser printer
so I can't resort to displaying negative amounts in red.
Could anyone possibly advise what the notation is that I should use?


K. Gladstone

             PCSOFT maintains many useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                     http://nospin.com/pc/files.html