Moving minus sign from the right to left?

[Zero1985]

Hi all,

I extracted a large amount of data figures. I noticed that the minus sign is facing the wrong way, and thus Excel is picking it up as a text instead of a number figure. For example, 48-. The correct way I want it to read is -48. What's the best way to reverse the minus sign?

I'm working with a large amount of figures, over 20,000.

 

[Weazel]

you can try data ... text to columns ... delimited ... next ... next ...finish

or if you need to do it with a formula something like...

=-SUBSTITUTE(A2,"-","")

 

[Rick Rothstein]

you can try data ... text to columns ... delimited ... next ... next ...finish

You can simplify this procedure by simply clicking the Finish button as soon as the Text To Columns dialog box appears. The only possible way this could fail is if the minus sign (dash) was used.