Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Displaying Negative Percentages in Red.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 15, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365
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 two distinct ways you can display negative percentages in red. One way is to use a custom number format. Precise details on how you put together custom formats has been covered in other issues of ExcelTips, so here is the quick way you can get the desired results:

Figure 1. The Number tab of the Format Cells dialog box.
The format you specify in step 5 displays positive percentages with two decimal places and displays negative percentages in red with two decimal places. (You can modify the number of decimal places in the format, if necessary.)
The other way that you can display negative percentages in red is to use conditional formatting by following these steps:

Figure 2. The New Formatting Rule dialog box.

Figure 3. The Font tab of the Format Cells dialog box.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6816) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Displaying Negative Percentages in Red.
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