Skip to main content

How to change negative numbers to positive in Excel?

When you are processing operations in Excel, sometimes, you may need to change the negative numbers to the positive numbers or vice versa. Are there any quick tricks you can apply for changing negative numbers to positive? This article will introduce you the following tricks for converting all negative numbers to positive or vice versa easily.

Change negative to positive numbers with Paste special function

Easily change negative numbers to positive with Kutools for Excel

Using VBA code to convert all negative numbers of a range to positive


Change negative to positive numbers with Paste special function

You can change the negative numbers to positive numbers with following steps:

1. Enter number -1 in a blank cell, then select this cell, and press Ctrl + C keys to copy it.

2. Select all negative numbers in the range, right click, and select Paste Special… from the context menu. See screenshot:

Notes:
(1) Holding Ctrl key, you can select all negative numbers with clicking them one by one;
(2) If you have Kutools for Excel installed, you can apply its Select Special Cells feature to select all negative numbers quickly. Have a Free Trial!

3. And a Paste special dialog box will be displayed, select All option from Paste, select Multiply option from Operation, click OK. See screenshot:

4. The all selected negative numbers will be converted into positive numbers. Delete the number -1 as you need. See screenshot:

Easily change negative numbers to positive in the specified range in Excel

Comparing to removing the negative sign from cells one by one manually, Kutools for Excel's Change Sign of Values feature provides an extremely easy way to quickly change all negative numbers to positive in selection. Get a 30-day full-featured free trial now!

ad convert negative to positive

Kutools for Excel - Supercharge Excel with over 300 essential tools. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Get It Now


Quickly and easily change negative numbers to positive with Kutools for Excel

Most of Excel users don’t want to use VBA code, are there any quick tricks for changing the negative numbers into positive? Kutools for excel can help you easily and comfortably to achieve this.

Kutools for Excel - Supercharge Excel with over 300 essential tools. Enjoy a full-featured 30-day FREE trial with no credit card required! Get It Now

1.  Select a range including the negative numbers you want to change, and click Kutools > Content > Change Sign of Values.

2. Check Change all negative values to positive under Operation, and click Ok. See screenshot:

Now you will see all negative numbers change to positive numbers as shown as below:

Note: With this Change sign of Values feature, you also can fix trailing negative signs, change all positive numbers to negative, reverse the sign of all values and change all negative values to zero. Have a Free Trial!

(1) Quickly change all positive values to negative in the specified range:

(2) Easily reverse the sign of all values in the specified range:

(3) Easily change all negative values to zero in the specified range:

(4) Easily fix trailing negative signs in the specified range:

Tip: To use this feature, you should install Kutools for Excel first, please click to download and have a 30-day free trial now.

Using VBA code to convert all negative numbers of a range to positive

As an Excel professional, also you can run the VBA code to change the negative numbers to positive numbers.

1. Press Alt + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. There will be a new window displayed. Click Insert > Module, then input the following codes in the module:

Sub Positive
Dim Cel As Range
For Each Cel In Selection
If IsNumeric(Cel.Value) Then
Cel.Value = Abs(Cel.Value)
End If
Next Cel
End Sub

3. Then click Run button or press F5 key to run application, and all negative numbers will be changed to positive numbers. See screenshot:


Demo: Change negative numbers to positive or vice versa with Kutools for Excel


Kutools for Excel: Over 300 handy tools at your fingertips! Start your 30-day free trial with no feature limitations today. Download Now!
Comments (31)
Rated 4.5 out of 5 · 1 ratings
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
=sqrt((numbers)^2)
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Hi Kevin Alexander,
The SQRT function is a good way. However, if you want to convert a negative number to positive by excel formula/function, you can use the ABS function directly, =ABS(your_negative_number). For example, =ABS(-5) will return 5.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
I chose a simpler solution, no formulas needed. First, to preserve the original data in case I goofed up, I copied the raw CMM measurement data in Worksheet 1 to Worksheet 2. Next, In Worksheet 2, I selected the multiple disconnected blocks of cells which had some negative numbers I wanted to convert to positive numbers. Then, I simply used the “replace” function to replace the minus sign with … nothing! It worked perfectly, and was clean; no formulas, no conditional formatting, and the raw unaltered data remained on Worksheet 1 as my backup resource. Applying a formula is not always the answer. I love using Excel to do data logging, tracking, analysis, and to answer so many math questions, both at work and personally. At work, I measure parts, and the machine measures distances to the left as negative numbers, and not just a positive number distance. Other measurements, though, are at a position of being on a datum X or Y, at zero. Those measurements will be off zero in the positive or negative direction, and I need hose occasional negative numbers to remain negative. That meant I had to select a partial column here, another there, and skip ones that measured around a zero target, then apply that “negative sign removal) to only those measurements that were negatives, but did not have zero as the target dimension. It is probably confusing until actually seeing the spreadsheet I was fixing, but the method I chose worked perfectly, and had no formula involved, just a clean minus-sign removal done as a “replace” edit. Thank you, Joel
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Thank you so much!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
use this formula (A1 is a cell reference in which you want to convert) =max(A1,-A1) What this formula does is to choose the highest number, and positive will normally be the highest number.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Taimoor, Your solution requires adding a column of formulas. The easiest way is to use "find and replace", as I explained here on 4/20/16. Enter a dash in the first line, nothing in the second, and replace as many of them as you want ("find next" or "replace all"). Not "complexed" at all. Your method creates clutter on the spreadsheet with a new column of formulas that requires the first column of negative numbers to remain, although it is now just a sub-component of the formulas column. Then, if you want to clean up the spreadsheet, you would have to hide that first column of negative numbers. Messy. No thank you. You say other people's methods are "complexed", but yours is not, IMHO, much, if any, of an improvement.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
"Formulas? We don' need no ... " Click on Find and Replace. Enter a dash in the "Find What" section. Leave the "Replace With" section blank. Click "Replace All" and BAM! Negativity" gone. If you want to play it safe, and aren't sure about whether or not you will muck up your spreadsheet, copy Sheet 1 to Sheet 2, then perform the Find and Replace action with Sheet 2. If you like it, copy what you want and paste it back into Sheet 1. Safe as can be!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Click on that Negative Number. Right Click & go on Format Cell & click on 1234.
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Sachin, when you go to "Format Cell, and do as you suggested, that does not change the value of the number, it will only change the format, the color. And you left out a couple steps: 1. what tab to click on (number?), and 2. what category in that tab do you choose, then 3. which style option do you select (which still will not change the VALUE of the number, only the appearance (negative numbers showing in red, for example).
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
It's so simple. Don't know why it's been explained in such a complexed manner. Suppose you have a column A with following values: Cell A: A2= -4000 A3= -5000 A4= -8000 Apply the formula in cell B2 =A2*(-1) And drag it down till the last value of column A. Done!
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
Just did the copy/paste -1 onto highlighted positive numbers and puff, like magic my job is done here. Big time saver big help
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
I've found highlighting the column hitting ctrl F, then replacing - with nothing will remove the -. Its easy
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
It is so simple if you multiply -1 with the value or column and drag the formula :)
There are no comments posted here yet
Load More
Please leave your comments in English
Posting as Guest
×
Rate this post:
0   Characters
Suggested Locations