I have been presented with a bank statement file as a .CSV which has the negative numbers formatted in brackets. On loading into Calc, these numbers are considered to be text. I have managed to devise a workaround by creating a formula that strips the brackets and adds a minus sign, but I was just wondering whether there was a built in way to tell calc to import them as negative numbers in the first place.
Set/use the brackets as custom separator charactes together the option “merge delimiters” in the import filter.
As I had the reverse problem (LO coverted my (54321) after copy/paste in -54321 by default), I’d suggest to change the type of the column during csv-Import to a number/currency instead of “auto” by clicking on the column header.
It may be necessary to click “detect special numbers” also.
Will test it later myself…
J.
Thanks Wanderer. The list of column types available are Standard, Text, Date (DMY), Date (MDY), Date (YMD), US English, Hide. None of them looked helpful, but your suggestion prompted me to try anyway. Amazingly setting the column type to US English in the Text Import dialog gave the desired result!