How to change negative numbers to positive numbers in Excel

[Shaina Na]

Hi friends, recently I have tried to change the sign in my data in excel but however I am not able to do that again. So I just want to know If I need to quickly change an entire column (800 rows) of negative numbers to positive numbers. I tried the paste special multiply by -1, but it didn't work, I'm probably doing it wrong. If you have any ideas for this then please let me know.

[JyotiT]

I think you should try to use this to make the changes in the sign of the data in the excel sheet, incase your data is in A1:A10 and -1 is in B1, then copy B1, select A1:A10 and then click edit and paste special and then multiply the -1 to the data whose sign you want to change.

[Shaina Na]

I have tried to multiply -1 to the respective cell, but some sign change and some were still the same, now why this is happening. What should I do for this thing to work properly? Any ideas for this, how to make the changes of the left data? Thanks for the reply

[BillieJ]

If the copy and paste special > multiply is not working, then there may be some chances that perhaps your numbers are not "numbers" but text. In an adjacent column enter =ISNUMBER (cellref) and copy down a few rows. Do you get TRUE or FALSE, so if it is true then you might be able to make the changes to the sign of that respective number.