Custom formats using asterisk, semicolon, and brackets

- For most Excel users…when it comes time to adjusting numeric formats,…go to the Home tab, and in the Number group here…use dollar sign, comma, percent,…possibly increase, change the decimals.…But behind the scenes, there are additional formats…and anytime you press Control 1…you might or might not have to click the Number tab…you could be viewing custom formats.…Many times when you come here you're seeing General…or Number or Currency.…If you click Custom and start to scroll up and down…you might be a bit overwhelmed…if you've never seen this capability.…

As we start to scroll up and down here…we see various parentheses, semicolons, brackets…sometimes we see colors like red, black possibly.…All kinds of unusual symbols in there.…Asterisk in there also from time to time.…Without going through all these,…some of these will have meaning…I think anybody who is interested…in different kinds of formats…will learn something from what we're about to show you here.…So let's back out of here for the moment.…Take a look at the entries in Column A.…