How to change negative numbers to positive in Excel?

When you are processing operations in Excel, sometimes, you may need to change the negative numbers to the positive numbers or vice versa. Are there any quick tricks you can apply for changing negative numbers to positive? This article will introduce you the following tricks for converting all negative numbers to positive or vice versa easily.

Change negative to positive numbers with Paste special function

You can change the negative numbers to positive numbers with following steps:

1. Enter number -1 in a blank cell, then select this cell, and press Ctrl + C keys to copy it.

2. Select all negative numbers in the range, right click, and select Paste Special… from the context menu. See screenshot:

Notes:
(1) Holding Ctrl key, you can select all negative numbers with clicking them one by one;
(2) If you have Kutools for Excel installed, you can apply its Select Special Cells feature to select all negative numbers quickly. Have a Free Trial!

3. And a Paste special dialog box will be displayed, select All option from Paste, select Multiply option from Operation, click OK. See screenshot:

4. The all selected negative numbers will be converted into positive numbers. Delete the number -1 as you need. See screenshot:

Easily change negative numbers to positive in the specified range in Excel

Comparing to removing the negative sign from cells one by one manually, Kutools for Excel's Change Sign of Values feature provides an extremely easy way to quickly change all negative numbers to positive in selection. Full Feature Free Trial 30-day!
ad convert negative to positive

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Using VBA code to convert all negative numbers of a range to positive

As an Excel professional, also you can run the VBA code to change the negative numbers to positive numbers.

1. Press Alt + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. There will be a new window displayed. Click Insert > Module, then input the following codes in the module:

Sub Positive
Dim Cel As Range
For Each Cel In Selection
If IsNumeric(Cel.Value) Then
Cel.Value = Abs(Cel.Value)
End If
Next Cel
End Sub

3. Then click Run button or press F5 key to run application, and all negative numbers will be changed to positive numbers. See screenshot:

Quickly and easily change negative numbers to positive with Kutools for Excel

Most of Excel users don’t want to use VBA code, are there any quick tricks for changing the negative numbers into positive? Kutools for excel can help you easily and comfortably to achieve this.

Kutools for Excel - Includes more than 300 handy tools for Excel. Full feature free trial 30-day, no credit card required! Get It Now

1.  Select a range including the negative numbers you want to change, and click Kutools > Content > Change Sign of Values.

2. Check Change all negative values to positive under Operation, and click Ok. See screenshot:

Now you will see all negative numbers change to positive numbers as shown as below:

Note: With this Change sign of Values feature, you also can fix trailing negative signs, change all positive numbers to negative, reverse the sign of all values and change all negative values to zero. Have a Free Trial!

(1) Quickly change all positive values to negative in the specified range:

(2) Easily reverse the sign of all values in the specified range:

(3) Easily change all negative values to zero in the specified range:

(4) Easily fix trailing negative signs in the specified range:

Kutools for Excel - Includes more than 300 handy tools for Excel. Full feature free trial 30-day, no credit card required! Get It Now

Demo: Change negative numbers to positive or vice versa with Kutools for Excel


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  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Kevin Alexander · 1 years ago
    =sqrt((numbers)^2)
    • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
      kellytte · 11 months ago
      Hi Kevin Alexander,
      The SQRT function is a good way. However, if you want to convert a negative number to positive by excel formula/function, you can use the ABS function directly, =ABS(your_negative_number). For example, =ABS(-5) will return 5.
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Joel · 3 years ago
    I chose a simpler solution, no formulas needed.

    First, to preserve the original data in case I goofed up, I copied the raw CMM measurement data in Worksheet 1 to Worksheet 2.

    Next, In Worksheet 2, I selected the multiple disconnected blocks of cells which had some negative numbers I wanted to convert to positive numbers. Then, I simply used the “replace” function to replace the minus sign with … nothing! It worked perfectly, and was clean; no formulas, no conditional formatting, and the raw unaltered data remained on Worksheet 1 as my backup resource.

    Applying a formula is not always the answer. I love using Excel to do data logging, tracking, analysis, and to answer so many math questions, both at work and personally.

    At work, I measure parts, and the machine measures distances to the left as negative numbers, and not just a positive number distance. Other measurements, though, are at a position of being on a datum X or Y, at zero. Those measurements will be off zero in the positive or negative direction, and I need hose occasional negative numbers to remain negative.

    That meant I had to select a partial column here, another there, and skip ones that measured around a zero target, then apply that “negative sign removal) to only those measurements that were negatives, but did not have zero as the target dimension. It is probably confusing until actually seeing the spreadsheet I was fixing, but the method I chose worked perfectly, and had no formula involved, just a clean minus-sign removal done as a “replace” edit.

    Thank you,

    Joel
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      Roy · 2 years ago
      Thank you so much!
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Zaki Dawood · 3 years ago
    use this formula (A1 is a cell reference in which you want to convert)

    =max(A1,-A1)

    What this formula does is to choose the highest number, and positive will normally be the highest number.
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    joe calkee-later · 4 years ago
    Taimoor, Your solution requires adding a column of formulas. The easiest way is to use "find and replace", as I explained here on 4/20/16. Enter a dash in the first line, nothing in the second, and replace as many of them as you want ("find next" or "replace all").

    Not "complexed" at all.

    Your method creates clutter on the spreadsheet with a new column of formulas that requires the first column of negative numbers to remain, although it is now just a sub-component of the formulas column. Then, if you want to clean up the spreadsheet, you would have to hide that first column of negative numbers. Messy. No thank you. You say other people's methods are "complexed", but yours is not, IMHO, much, if any, of an improvement.
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Joe Calkee-later · 4 years ago
    "Formulas? We don' need no ... "

    Click on Find and Replace.
    Enter a dash in the "Find What" section.
    Leave the "Replace With" section blank.
    Click "Replace All" and BAM! Negativity" gone.

    If you want to play it safe, and aren't sure about whether or not you will muck up your spreadsheet, copy Sheet 1 to Sheet 2, then perform the Find and Replace action with Sheet 2. If you like it, copy what you want and paste it back into Sheet 1. Safe as can be!
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Sachin · 4 years ago
    Click on that Negative Number.
    Right Click & go on Format Cell & click on 1234.
    • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
      joe calkee-later · 4 years ago
      Sachin, when you go to "Format Cell, and do as you suggested, that does not change the value of the number, it will only change the format, the color. And you left out a couple steps: 1. what tab to click on (number?), and 2. what category in that tab do you choose, then 3. which style option do you select (which still will not change the VALUE of the number, only the appearance (negative numbers showing in red, for example).
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Taimoor Ahmed · 4 years ago
    It's so simple. Don't know why it's been explained in such a complexed manner.

    Suppose you have a column A with following values:
    Cell A:
    A2= -4000
    A3= -5000
    A4= -8000


    Apply the formula in cell B2 =A2*(-1)

    And drag it down till the last value of column A.

    Done!
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Cheryl · 4 years ago
    Just did the copy/paste -1 onto highlighted positive numbers and puff, like magic my job is done here. Big time saver big help
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    kDibbs · 4 years ago
    I've found highlighting the column hitting ctrl F, then replacing - with nothing will remove the -. Its easy
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    Kripesh · 5 years ago
    It is so simple if you multiply -1 with the value or column and drag the formula :)
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    ashish · 5 years ago
    please use formula abs to change negative sign to positive
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    Deepak Jeet · 5 years ago
    Use only formula =abs(-10)=10 so easy...
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    USK · 5 years ago
    AUTHORIZED ALLOWED BALANCE UNIT PRICE AUTHORIZED ALLOWED UNDERRUN OVERRUN
    QUANTITY QUANTITY QUANTITY COST $ TO DATE $ BALANCE $ BALANCE $
    100.00 106.00 -6.00 $0.01 $1.00 $1.06 $0.00 -$0.06
    218.00 210.00 8.00 $0.01 $2.18 $2.10 $0.08 $0.00

    I wanted automatically overrun and underrun cost to be on the respect column. How to do on Excell.
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    Tom · 5 years ago
    Perfect, thanks so much
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    tonyboy · 5 years ago
    very help ful for me and all users
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    ravi · 5 years ago
    pls kindly help me out with this issue as i wanted to covert negative value to positive value by selecting empty cell and copying the negative value and going to paste special and selecting multiply option it is showin the negative value as 0
    kutools option is not availible in 2007 & 2010 in this version
    could you help me to come out to convert the neative value to positive value
    what are the formulaes which are used to convert negative to positive
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Naseer · 6 years ago
    Dear Excel legend, with the above discreption has been usefull for me, thanks for your excellency.
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Markg · 6 years ago
    If you want to be able to flip a number to + from - or visa versa you could use *-1 for example =(A1)*-1
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Russell Berkeley · 6 years ago
    I wanted to show the % as a positive so I used : =(SQRT(A1*A1))/A2
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Quintin · 6 years ago
    or... in 2 different cells = same number, multiply them with each other and take the square root of it.. =sqrt(A1*B1)
    Neg times neg = positive...
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    Tariq Faheem Khan · 6 years ago
    THANK YOU,THANK YOU,THANK YOU,THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! :roll:
    • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
      Think_simple · 6 years ago
      Make sure all the numbers are present as 'value' and not as formula. Then hit ctrl+F and replace "-" (negative sign) with ""(empty). That should make all the numbers positive.
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    Renée · 6 years ago
    Very helpful, thanks!
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    A.J. · 6 years ago
    or you could just get the absolute value with the formula =abs(cell).
    • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
      Gof · 5 years ago
      A.J. You're a true savior!
    • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
      ravi · 5 years ago
      thank you very much which helps me to resolve the issue raised
      by my colleague
  • To post as a guest, your comment is unpublished.
    Anonymous · 6 years ago
    Thank you!!! Legend.