Another excel formula situation

Question

I want to be able to display a difference in seconds as (+4.15) or sometimes negatively as (-4.15) and include the parentheses and plus/minus sign.

How can I use a form

Answer 1

Your desired results (e.g. +4.15 and -4.15 ) are not covered by the various available standard number formats but you can easily apply a custom number format aka CNF.

A CNF can have up to four parts; positive numbers, negative numbers, zero and text. The following will display positive numbers as black and a plus sign, negative numbers as red with a minus sign, a single grey dash instead of zero and blue text. The latter should never be actually used but the blue text will quickly show text that should have been interpreted as a number. The true numbers will be 'padded' off the right edge by a single space.

[Black]_(+#,##0.00_);[Red]_(-#,##0.00_);[Color10]_(* "-"_);[Blue]_(@_)

Example:

More on custom number formats at Create or delete a custom number format