How do you reverse the sign of a range of numbers in Excel?
In accounting I sometimes download statements where although the transaction represents debit, the sign is negative.
I then need to change the sign to be positive so it's actually indicating a true debit/withdrawal from the account.
How can I easily do this to a range of numbers in Excel?
Solution 1:
Excel lets you apply a multiplication against a range of numbers via the Paste Special function.
To reverse the sign, this is equivalent to a multiplication by -1
. Therefore:
- Enter
-1
into any free field - highlight it and copy
- Select the range you want to change the sign of
- Right click, point to paste special and choose Paste Special
- In the new dialog Paste All and apply Operation Multiplication
- OK - all numbers have their sign changed.
Solution 2:
this is what the formula looks like =(SUM(J120:J202))*-1 replace the cells with yours in your spreadsheet