Excel Custom Number Formats

Mynda Treacy

March 21, 2014

One of the most useful features in Excel are custom number formats yet they remain largely underused.

Mynda Excel TV interviewIn my Excel TV interview this week I shared a tip (at 52min) which uses Excel Custom Number formats inside the Excel TEXT Function, and coincidently Jordan Goldmeier (from the Option Explicit VBA blog) also used Custom Number formats in his tip (at 1hr 1min), but in a different way.

I’ve written an extensive guide on them here: Excel Custom Number Format Guide

I used them in my Tour de France Dashboard to hide zeroes and show a + symbol before the ‘Gap’ times.


custom format in tour de france dashboard


I used them in this chart to indicate the direction of the change in the chart labels:


Excel chart using custom number formats


And I've written various blog posts that use them:

Excel Factor 20: Custom Number Format Disguise:

Marc uses them to create this data validation list that displays text, but when selected it changes to a value:


data validation and custom number format


Custom Number Format Disguise


Excel Factor 21: Hyperlink Triptych:

Zoran uses them in Data Validation lists to prompt the user to click on it:


Custom Format down arrow


Custom Number Format Triptych


And I use them here to convert numbers into text using the TEXT function


Excel Text Function


I hope you can see the diversity of applications for custom number formats and that this compilation will motivate you to master them (if you’re not already using them extensively in your work).

I know they can look a little daunting with all of the different characters but once you understand the basics you'll be surprised at what you can do with them.

AUTHOR Mynda Treacy Co-Founder / Owner at My Online Training Hub

CIMA qualified Accountant with over 25 years experience in roles such as Global IT Financial Controller for investment banking firms Barclays Capital and NatWest Markets.

Mynda has been awarded Microsoft MVP status every year since 2014 for her expertise and contributions to educating people about Microsoft Excel.

Mynda teaches several courses here at MOTH including Excel Expert, Excel Dashboards, Power BI, Power Query and Power Pivot.

4 thoughts on “Excel Custom Number Formats”

  1. I’m addicted to custom number formatting! I practically never use the TEXT function any more, once I discovered how much more robust the custom number formatting is in most cases.

    Reply
    • Same, Bryan.

      I only use the TEXT function if I’m joining numbers to a text string in a formula. Also, like Jordan mentioned in his tip on Excel TV, you can sometimes use them instead of Conditional Formatting (CF), which has the added bonus that they’re quicker to process and aren’t volatile like CF.

      Reply
  2. Mynda,

    thanks for these brilliant examples. Makes my head spin with ideas. Especially the “down” and “up” arrows. Would you mind going into a little bit more detail in regards to the three states positives/zero/negatives?

    Reply
    • Cheers, Phil.

      Custom Number Formats can have up to 4 sections of code which are separated by semicolons. Each code section defines the format for positive numbers, negative numbers, zero values and text, in that order.

      ;;;

      You use a range of characters to specify the formatting.

      For more on those characters I highly recommend my comprehensive guide to Excel custom number formats

      Cheers,

      Mynda.

      Reply

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