Geraldine has attended:
Word Intermediate course
Tables
How do you align a table of numbers using brackets for negative numbers and having the figures aligned and not the brackets
RE: tables
Hi Geraldine
Thank you for your question and welcome to the forum.
Can you please elaborate a little more as I'm not sure what it is that you'd like to be able to achieve with the display of the figures - do you want the negative numbers in brackets aligned in a different way to numbers that aren't in brackets?
Amanda
RE: tables
Hi Amanda,
We produce a huge financial report which has lots of large tables in it. We report negative figures in brackets. I need the figures in brackets to line up in the column with the positive figures and not with the brackets. For example if i had (235) in the first row and 1435 in the next, i would expect to see the five directly under the five, the three under the three and the four under the two (235)
1435
Not the right bracket lined up to the 5 of the second row.
The figures in the table are right aligned to make the report easier to read and match to headings. So to achieve this effect at the moment i am having to centre each positive number and then use the space bar to align the positive number to the negative number.
RE: tables
Hi Geraldine
Wow, this was a tricky one...sorry I didn't come back to you straight away but I had to have a bit of a play around with this to see what I could come up with.
What I would do it right-align the figures (rather than centre align them), then increase the cell margin on the right hand side of the cells which contain positive numbers.
To change a cell margin:
1. Click inside the cell containing the positive number.
2. Go to Table - Properties, then select the Cell tab.
3. Click the Options button.
4. Remove the tick from the box that says 'Same as the whole table'.
5. Increase the right cell margin (for example, I did this using the example numbers you had provided and by increasing the right margin to 0.35cm I lined up the numbers as you described).
Kind regards
Amanda
RE: tables
Hi Geraldine
One of my colleagues also had the following suggestion, which you could use use by either inserting an Excel worksheet into your document and using that to display the numbers; or if your data is coming from Excel in the first place you could use this to format the numbers first before putting them into Word.
Select the cells containing the figures, and then go to Format - Number and then set a Custom Number format as shown: #,##0 ;(#,##0);0
If you had created an Excel worksheet in Word, you would need to double-click on it first before doing the above.
Amanda
