Percentage losses.

[DB.]

In cell A10 I have the value of my shares at close yesterday
(£1000 -cell formatted in £).
In cell B10 have the value of my shares at close today (£1050 -cell
formatted in £).
In cell C10 I have today's gain =(B10-A10) -formatted in £ to appear
RED if the 'gain' is a loss.
In cell D10 I have today's gain shown as a percentage i.e.
=(B10-A10)/A10 formatted as a percentage.

This is all very well if I've made a gain today - the percentage figure
in D10 appears in black. If I've made a loss the percentage figure
appears in black with a minus sign in front of it. Is there any way I
can arrange for this loss% to appear in red? It surprises me that
whilst negative numbers and sums can readily be made to appear in red
negative percentages cannot.

I'm using Excel 2003. TIA of any reply.

 

[Stephen Lloyd]

You're probably aware of this, however, what you're attempting to do can be
done by going to Format>Conditional Formatting and choosing the following:

-Cell Value Is
-less than
- enter 0 in the text box
- select the format option and change the color drop down to red

One other important % tidbit... When working with percentages something
like 90% should be entered as 0.9.

 

[DB.]

Thanks for your reply, Steven.

I've followed (I think!) your instructions and that gives me a red
background to my (negative percentage) cell - whereas I'd been looking
for the digits themselves to become red. Am I, I wonder, missing
something?

BW's,
DB.

 

[DB.]

Ah! Belay that last post! All is OK now! I found I had to use the
"Font" tab to get my (red) colour rather than the "Patterns" tab which
came up by default.

Again, many thanks.
DB.

 

[ShaneDevenshire]

FYI,

You can format negative % to show in red without using conditional formatting:

Choose Format, Cells, Number tab, Custom and on the Type line enter
0%;[Red]0%