I've been working with inventory spreadsheets in Google Sheets. I have many SKU's in my inventory and when pasting or typing them in, they are interpreted as text and are left justified in general format cells. For example, CF-55B, BB-32, JR-3039.

But when I type the SKU LS-1000 or LS-1001, it gets reinterpreted as -Ls 1000 or -Ls 1001, both of which are right aligned and appear to be interpreted as numbers representing -1000 and -1001.

Re-entering the values in as 'LS-1000 forces it to be entered as text, but can anybody tell me what is going on here?


Your entry is being interpreted as a Latvian currency value.

Would not happen if you switched to new Google Sheets. Meanwhile your solution is about as good as it gets.

-1,000 Lats puts you out of pocket by around USD1,800 ;-)

  • 1
    That was the only SKU that was getting treated that way. After discovering all the other currency formats on the format submenu, yes, of course. Rs.-1000 does the same thing, as well as a bunch of others. Of course, I wouldn't probably ever look at that submenu. Mystery solved, and thank you. – MarkS Nov 1 '14 at 2:20

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