MS Excel: Displaying Negative Percentages in Red

It’s easy using Excel’s built-in number formats to display negative values in red. What isn’t so obvious is how to display negative percentages in red. This is because Excel doesn’t provide a built-in format that addresses this situation.

There are different ways you can display negative percentages in red. One way is to use a custom number format.

1. Select the cell (or cells) that may contain negative percentages.

2. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.

3. Click the small icon at the lower-right corner of the Number group. Excel displays the Format Cells dialog box, with the Number tab selected.

4. In the Category list, choose Custom. The dialog box changes so you can enter a custom format. (See Figure 1.)

5. In the Type box, enter the following: 0.00%;[Red]-0.00%

6. Click OK.

MS Word: Creating a Table of Authorities in Microsoft

In long legal documents, a table of authorities is often used to cite references to statutes, cases and other sources for information referenced in the document. The table of authorities will cite the case or statute along with the page number in the document on which the case or statute is referenced.

Word includes the ability to easily create a table of authorities. You do so by first marking citations within your document, and then instructing Word to compile the citations into your final table. (This tip deals specifically with marking citations, which is the basis of creating a table of authorities).

As you are marking citations, you can specify both long and short versions of citations. For instance, a long citation may be something like “Smith v. Jones, 37 Adj. 3d 421 (1968).” The short version of the citation could be something like “Smith v. Jones” or even “Smith (1968).”

To mark citations, follow these steps:

1. Select the long, full citation you want to use.

2. Press Shift+Alt+I. Word displays the Mark Citation dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

3. Make any editorial changes desired to the text in the Selected Text box.

4. Using the drop-down Category list, select the category to which this citation belongs.

5. In the Short Citation box, edit the text to reflect the short version of the citation.

6. Click on Mark (to mark just the current, selected instance of the citation) or Mark All (to search the document and mark all instances).

7. Click on Cancel.

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