How to remove brackets (parentheses) from a cell? | Excel forum

Hi Maria

Thank you for your question. You have a couple of options. You can enclose the formula with an ABS() function. This will strip the positive and negative from the number, just leaving the value.
Alternatively it sounds like the brackets are appearing around your negative values because a number format has been applied.
Highlight your cells, right click and choose format cells. In the Number tab choose the custom format.

Search down the list of formats until you find

#,##0;[Red]-#,##0

the semi colon divides the formats for positive numbers and negative numbers

select this format and in the Type box edit the negative half of the format by removing

[Red]- 

in other words the format will be the same for both positive and negative formats.

so you can either return a value that is always positive using abs() or retain the true value but make it appear without brackets using a custom number format.

Hope this helps - let me know if you need any further help.

Kind regards,
Andrew