Conditional formatting w/ negative #

[Fern]

I have worksheet with standards and monthly entries. I want to format the monthly entries so that those which fall below the standard are in red. This works fine unless there is a negative number. For example, one standard is greater than or equal to 0.0% and the entry for May is
-.2%. (I didn't make up these standards, and other people enter the monthly numbers). I think Excel is seeing the minus sign, and therefore the whole entry, as text. I am pretty sure that -.2% is less than 0. I am entering the condition as "less than or equal to" 0.00. Excel converts this to just plain 0.

[egghead]

I just tried it in Excel 2000, with the numbers formatted as percentages, and it formatted the negative percentage and a zero value the same (in red).

You may want to check Format/Cells and the Number tab to make sure the cells areformatted as numbers.

[Fern]

Thanks, egghead. I had checked that, but I went in again, and noticed that the entry was not taking the formatting. I re-entered the number and it worked. Ah, the pitfalls of working with someone else's spreadsheet.