Description: Hi folks, i dont know wether it is a bug ?! cell input -> (7) cell output -7 "minus seven" if cell is not preformatted as text cell input -> ( ) cell output -> ( ) input seems to be detected as text kind regards jürgen Actual Results: input -> (7) Expected Results: -7 Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: (7) i dont know
I don't think this is a bug. Numbers enclosed within Parentheses is a valid default negative number format. You can observe this on Format > Cells > Numbers, category "Numbers", and select "English (United States" in the language dropdown list. This is no difference compared with typing "123,456" in the cell, in which case the input is recognized as a number rather than a string, as the comma "," is a number format string. Or, it is recognized as a date (stored as a number actually) if you type in "2020-1-1". Expressing negative numbers by enclosing the numeber with parentheses is very common especially in finance. You may see that many companies represent their financial statements showing negative numbers in parentheses. This means that, if you copy-paste a this kind of numbers into Calc, it is correctly recognized as negative numbers rather than string. See also https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/negative-numbers-aren-t-showing-with-parentheses-in-excel-682a1cc5-701a-4ce7-92db-cc9eebc5ffa0
By the way, if you want to type in (7) as text rather than negative number, the best way is to add a ' before it, i.e. '(7)