Feb 15 2005

How To Display A Dash In Excel

Jody posted this at 10:20 am under what i learned today

To display a dash (-) as the first character in a cell in Microsoft Excel (so it isn’t interpreted as a mathematical symbol), prefix the dash with an apostrophe, like so:

'- This value begins with a dash.

I’ve been programming in VBA for Excel and other products since VBA first came out, but I’m not an expert at using them as they were intended; I’d rather create a function to do some manipulation than create a formula, though I know a formula is often more efficient.


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4 Responses to “How To Display A Dash In Excel”. Leave a Reply.

  1. # Penderon 15 Feb 2005 at 1:13 pm

    What if you wanted to subtract “fart” from “butt”? You couldn’t do butt-fart anymore, since it’s now a string!

  2. # J-Walkon 15 Feb 2005 at 7:45 pm

    Jody, another way to do it is to format the cell as Text. Use Format * Cell. In the Number tab, choose Text from the Category list.

  3. # Jodyon 15 Feb 2005 at 8:28 pm

    I knew that, gosh darn it.

    Thanks.

  4. # ChrisOon 16 Feb 2005 at 5:54 pm

    Excel is fun.

    unfortunately, i’ll never use it again.

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