Is it possible to make numbers in Excel cells to be displayed just as in General format, except for only one thing: another character (or several characters) in place of common minus sign? I.e. make −5 be rendered as “!5”, “minus 5”, ➖5 or even ?5.
I look for a solution affecting only visible formatting of the numbers, but not their actual values, use in formulas, etc.
I have experimented with custom number formats like #,##0 and so on, but they all lead to loss of “generality” of General format. In particular, the custom formats either include a decimal point into every number, even whole one, or don’t include it globally, even into fractional numbers.
Also, there is a setting of negative number sign deep inside in Control Panel, but it affects the whole user interface, and I need a solution for a particular Excel workbook.
I tried to make use of Conditional Formatting, but on this way, I came to a conglomeration of ugly crutches that hurt my feeling of conceptual integrity. Maybe it is possible to succeed with Conditional Formatting, but I don’t know how.
Best Answer
Use this Custom format:
It will change the negative to
!