# Microsoft Office Application Help - Excel Help forum > Excel General >  >  Convert positive # to negative

## nmss18

Is there a simple way to convert a positive number to a negative number ?
Something like this?

From	to
10	(10.00)
56	(56.00)
116	(116.00)

Additionally, would the same procedure work for time?
So if I had a column listing hours that looks like this:

10:05:00
4:34:00
2:18:06

is there a way to convert this to negative hours? Understandably, there are no such thing as negative hours, but I am trying to illustrate a situation where an internal procedure was completed x amount of hours before the specified start time.
Any idea's?
Thanks.

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## DonkeyOte

You can enter -1 into a blank cell, copy it, highlight your values and then Paste Special -> Operation = Multiply

Time is a decimal value so you can store as a negative decimal however in terms of formats you can't display both positive & negative time formats simultaneously.

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## teylyn

Hi,

if you positive number is in A1, use the following formula to convert it to a negative number

=A1*-1

Time values can not be negative.

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## carsto

assuming your data is in cell A1

for numbers you can enter =-A1 into another cell


negative time doesn't exist in the 1900 date system
you can go to Tool > Options > Calculation and select 1904 date system

*THIS WILL CHANGE ALL DATES IN YOUR WORKBOOK BY 4 YEARS AND 1 DAY!*
(and it could mess up any linked formulas in other workbooks)

then you can enter =-A1

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## GuruWannaB

Converting positive to a negative - lets say a1 is the number




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In regards to hours....negative hours are displayed as "######..." and basically become useless.

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## DonkeyOte

teylyn / carstowel,

to reiterate TIME is Decimal value - noon = 0.5, 6am = 0.25 ... given this fact a time value per se CAN be negative... what you can not do is format the -ve decimal values to a standard TIME format.

(EDIT: without switching to 1904 system which I think we'd all agree is not advisable)

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## nmss18

Donkey Ote,
Thanks for your reply. The multiply function worked well for me.
nmss

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