Customize the Default Format

Default cell format for excel workbook is ‘General’. This post will help you modify this format with the cell format you want.

My earlier post spoke about creating number format that displays the negative symbol on right side of the number (refer post: Custom Number format – How to display a negative sign on the right side of the number?).

The format we created in that post is

0.00_-;0.00-

Using this custom format, we can display negative symbol on the right side of the number in the same cell. The first section (i.e. 0.00_-) will be applicable to the entire positive and zero entries and the second section (i.e. 0.00-) will be applicable to the negative entries.

Now we need to apply this as default number format for the ENTIRE workbook. How can we make this as our default number format?

Step1:

1. Right-click the Normal Style icon (Home > Style > Cell Styles)
2. Choose modify (refer Picture A)

Picture A

Step 2:

1. Click the format button in the Style Dialog Box;
2. Choose your custom cell format that you want to use for Normal Style and click OK (in Format Dialog Box); and
3. Click OK (in Style dialog box)

Picture B

 

Result:

Now make few entries with some positive and negative values in your excel workbook.

The result will be as given in Picture C

Picture C