Formatting currency in excel

If you want to display numbers as monetary values, you must format those numbers as currency. To do this, you apply either the Currency or Accounting number format to the cells that you want to format. The number formatting options are available on the Home tab, in the Number group.

In this article

• Format numbers as currency

• Remove currency formatting

• What’s the difference between the Currency and Accounting formats?

• Create a workbook template with specific currency formatting settings

Format numbers as currency

You can display a number with the default currency symbol by selecting the cell or range of cells, and then clicking Accounting Number Format in the Number group on the Home tab. (If you want to apply the Currency format instead, select the cells, and press Ctrl+Shift+$.)

If you want more control over either format, or you want to change other aspects of formatting for your selection, you can follow these steps.

Select the cells you want to format

On the Home tab, click the Dialog Box Launcher next to Number.

Tip: You can also press Ctrl+1 to open the Format Cells dialog box.

In the Format Cells dialog box, in the Category list, click Currency or Accounting.

In the Symbol box, click the currency symbol that you want.

Note: If you want to display a monetary value without a currency symbol, you can click None.

In the Decimal places box, enter the number of decimal places that you want for the number. For example, to display $138,691 instead of $138,690.63 in the cell, enter 0 in the Decimal places box.

As you make changes, watch the number in the Sample box. It shows you how changing the decimal places will affect the display of a number.

In the Negative numbers box, select the display style you want to use for negative numbers. If you don’t want the existing options for displaying negative numbers, you can create your own number format. For more information about creating custom formats, see Create or delete a custom number format.

Note: The Negative numbers box is not available for the Accounting number format. That’s because it is standard accounting practice to show negative numbers in parentheses.

To close the Format Cells dialog box, click OK.

If Excel displays ##### in a cell after you apply currency formatting to your data, the cell probably isn’t wide enough to display the data. To expand the column width, double-click the right boundary of the column that contains the cells with the ##### error. This automatically resizes the column to fit the number. You can also drag the right boundary until the columns are the size that you want.

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Remove currency formatting

If you want to remove the currency formatting, you can follow these steps to reset the number format.

1. Select the cells that have currency formatting.

2. On the Home tab, in the Number group, click General.

   Cells that are formatted with the General format do not have a specific number format.

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What’s the difference between the Currency and Accounting formats?

Both the Currency and Accounting formats are used to display monetary values. The difference between the two formats is explained in the following table.

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Create a workbook template with specific currency formatting settings

If you often use currency formatting in your workbooks, you can save time by creating a workbook that includes specific currency formatting settings, and then saving that workbook as a template. You can then use this template to create other workbooks.

1. Create a workbook.

2. Select the worksheet or worksheets for which you want to change the default number formatting.

   How to select worksheets

   To select	Do this
   A single sheet	Click the sheet tab. If you don’t see the tab that you want, click the tab scrolling buttons to display the tab, and then click the tab.
   Two or more adjacent sheets	Click the tab for the first sheet. Then hold down Shift while you click the tab for the last sheet that you want to select.
   Two or more nonadjacent sheets	Click the tab for the first sheet. Then hold down Ctrl while you click the tabs of the other sheets that you want to select.
   All sheets in a workbook	Right-click a sheet tab, and then click Select All Sheets on the shortcut menu.

   Tip    When multiple worksheets are selected, [Group] appears in the title bar at the top of the worksheet. To cancel a selection of multiple worksheets in a workbook, click any unselected worksheet. If no unselected sheet is visible, right-click the tab of a selected sheet, and then click Ungroup Sheets.

3. Select the specific cells or columns you want to format, and then apply currency formatting to them.

Make any other customizations that you like to the workbook, and then do the following to save it as a template: