"-" Sign Isn't Working on the Keypad

[natesteiner21]

So I got a new computer and on it came Office/Excel 365. I pulled open one of the spreadsheets that I have been working on and figured out that the "-" key doesn't work when it is the first key pushed in a cell. For example: If I want to put in a negative number I would input -123, the outcome is 123, when I put in =123-1, the outcome is 122. The "-" key on the keypad works just fine in any other program and it works fine in Excel if it's not the first key pushed.

It works fine using the "-" on the qwerty keyboard as well.

Any ideas?

Secondly, I searched aroung on google and saw a person having a similar issue and his fix was to press the f8 key. So I tried that, the outcome wasn't great. Basically everytime you push the "-" key on the keypad in Excel (obviously it doesn't come up from above) it "selects" all of the cell's between the first cell you were in and the next cell that you click on.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[BlueHornet]

Well, that's ... interesting.

There are ways to work around this deficiency, but how useful they might be would depend on how much the fixes detract from other performance.

For example, if you enter a number in parentheses, that is, just type (1) - no other punctuation, no = sign, etc., then it should be entered into the cell as a negative number. (At least, that's what happens on my machine, with my settings, and my Excel365.) Of course, that means a shift-( to start and a shift-) to complete, so four keystrokes instead of one ... but at least it works to enter the negative.

Alternatively, --1 makes the cell contents =-1, and that may or may not cause later problems for you. Again, it gives you the appearance of the same -1, but now it's a formula, so that could cause some problems.

You might also consider making an autocorrect entry of ++ to turn into -, and see if that more directly fixes the problem (if it will).

I'll be interested to see what other fixes are recommended.

 

[natesteiner21]

Thanks for your comments but I use the "-" a lot for the work I do and would really like to be able to just press the - on the keypad.

Thanks.