Office 2010 - Excel formatting: brackets do not appear for negative figures

Okay, so this has nothing to do with anything creative but a lot to do with creative frustration! When I got my Windows 7 machine with Office 2010, I noticed that my worksheets no longer formatted negative numbers in brackets with the "accounting" setting. Instead, the only option I was given was a dash and black text or a dash and red text. I personally find it very easy to overlook a dash when scanning a page and red text just means that it costs 8 - 10 times more to print that document because you have one red number. Boo.

So aside from the many people whose only answer was to custom format the sheet cell by cell to give me the brackets I desired, Bernard from Nova Scotia solved my frustrations. It's not a setting local to the Office software, but the whole computer! (Go figure.)

If you too are having this problem, follow these steps:
Go to your start menu (bottom left of your main task bar)
Select Control Panel
Select Region and Languages
Under Formats tab, select additional settings
Under BOTH the numbers and currency tabs, change the negative number format to a bracket
Select apply then ok until you are out of the window
Close whatever Office document you want to format
Reopen the document and format the cells to "Accounting"
Presto! You have your brackets back.

An accounting world sends its silent thank you's into the atmosphere.

Here's the linky link:
Microsoft Forum

Microsoft Excel Office 2010 Windows 7 accounting formatting negative numbers brackets dashes settings