Plus Sign Before Numbers in Excel is a useful feature for indicating positive values explicitly, enhancing clarity in your spreadsheets. By mastering the use of the plus sign, you can improve the readability and professionalism of your financial reports, budgets, and data presentations. Whether you’re preparing financial statements, conducting data analysis, or creating complex models, using a plus sign before numbers in Excel helps to clearly distinguish between positive and negative values. Embrace this simple yet effective practice to ensure your data is interpreted correctly and your spreadsheets communicate information accurately. Leverage the plus sign before numbers in Excel to make your data presentations more intuitive and visually appealing, thereby enhancing overall understanding and impact.
This Tutorial Covers:
- Usage of Plus Sign in Excel
- Using Excel’s Custom Format feature to add a plus sign
- Put a Plus Sign in Excel by Using Single Quote
- Make Use of the Formula to Put a Symbol Before a Number
- Formatting as Text in Excel to Insert a Plus Symbol
1. Usage of Plus Sign in Excel:
Typically, there are only two situations in which adding a Plus symbol in Excel is necessary. Phone numbers are covered by the first one. As globalization progresses quickly, many businesses now include country codes alongside the contact information for their employees. Price changes could be the second scenario. Add a plus symbol if you want to indicate price changes or other numerical changes using the plus sign (plus). Even though Conditional Formatting can be used for this, it’s wonderful to be able to use multiple approaches for different tasks.
However, Excel by default does not support this, so if we attempt to directly enter it, we will encounter errors. So, we try to figure out how to add Plus signs to Excel.
2. Using Excel’s Custom Format feature to add a plus sign:
In order to insert a Plus sign in Excel without using a formula, we will use the first method’s “Custom Style Cells” feature.
How to put plus before number using custom format feature is shown below:
Step 1: First, pick the B2–B6 cell range.
Step 2: To display the “Format Cells” dialog window, press CTRL + 1. Choose “Custom” under Type. Put “+@” in the “Type:” field after that. Lastly, click OK.
Following that, Excel will put a plus sign.
Now, you must type “+0” in the “Text: box” if you have digits. For instance, this Custom Format would append a Plus sign as “+5551234” if our contact number was “5551234”.
3. Put a Plus Sign in Excel by Using Single Quote:
In this method, the plus sign will be entered in Excel using a single quote. Our value will be treated as text by this Single Quotation or Apostrophe (‘).
You cannot use this technique if your data as number(without any hyphen sign between number)
The steps to put a plus sign before number using single quote are described below:
Step 1: Add a plus sign with an apostrophe (‘+) by double-clicking cell B2. As an alternative, you can add this by clicking on cell B2 and then again on the formula bar. After that, hit ENTER.
As a result, Excel will contain a Plus sign without any formula.
Do this again with the rest cells. However, you should use the first technique if you have a lot of data.
4. Make Use of the Formula to Put a Symbol Before a Number:
How to use the formula to put excel plus sign before a number is shown below:
Step 1: Put a plus sign (+) in any cell. In this example we put plus sign (+) in cell E2.
Step 2: Enter the following formula to combine the values of the two cells.
=$E$2&””&B2
Step 3: Press Enter to view the first value of the plus sign and number that has been added.
Step 4: In order to automatically fill all the cells, drag down the AutoFill Tool.
Step 5: You can hide the column B and E. You can also modify the header name in cell C1.
Then see result below:
5. Formatting as Text in Excel to Insert a Plus Symbol:
We will use the Ribbon Toolbar to format our values as Text for the final method. Similar to the second method, this one only requires we type the plus sign.
The steps to insert plus before number by formatting as text are described below:
Step 1: First, pick the B2–B6 cell range.
Step 2: Select the “Home” tab. Select “Text” from the “Number Format” drop-down menu under the “Number” section.
Step 3: Our values will now be formatted as Text. Double-click cell B2 after that to enter a plus sign.
Step 4: Finally, carry out this procedure for the remaining cells.
We’ve demonstrated four quick ways for you to insert a plus sign in Excel. I sincerely hope this tutorial was helpful.
Application of Plus Sign Before Numbers in Excel
- Financial Statements: Use a plus sign before numbers in Excel to explicitly indicate positive values in income statements and balance sheets, improving clarity.
- Budget Reports: Enhance budget reports by using plus signs to distinguish surplus amounts, making it easier to differentiate from negative figures.
- Data Analysis: Apply the plus sign in data tables to clearly show positive growth or increments in data analysis, facilitating better understanding.
- Presentation Charts: Include plus signs in chart data labels to highlight positive changes or trends, improving visual communication in presentations.
- Accounting: Use plus signs in accounting spreadsheets to indicate credits or positive entries, ensuring accurate financial tracking and reporting.
- Custom Formatting: Implement custom number formatting to display plus signs automatically before positive numbers, maintaining consistency and professionalism across all spreadsheets.
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