Apple launches Apple Store app in India

The Apple Store app provides customers with the most personalized way to shop for Apple’s innovative lineup of products and services. Learn more >

You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Where is the -0 Value coming from?

I have a column of zeros and whole numbers but a few of them are negative?

Where is the -0 Value coming from?


Cheers!



MacBook Pro 16″

Posted on Jan 11, 2025 12:21 PM

Reply
9 replies

Jan 15, 2025 11:53 AM in response to Bardonicloud

Here's how I did it.


First, I created some dummy data to work with (since I don't have your chart). Mine looks like this:




The cells in Column C are:


C2: =MIN(B) - 100

C3: =MAX(B) + 200


where -100 and +200 are the buffer zones I want to add. You can put any formula in here, including rounding if your numbers are odd.


Then I selected these three columns and created a 2D line chart via the Chart tab. This gave me:


Which looks kinda weird, granted. So the next step is to select the buffer series (the green line in the above example) and use Inspector -> Style to change the line format to 'None':



This hides the line and gives you the graph you want, with the buffer above and below the real data values:



Sure, the chart contains two series, but one of them is invisible.


Once set, you can also hide the dummy series cells in the main table so they're not distracting.

Jan 11, 2025 1:16 PM in response to Bardonicloud

It's most likely a rounding error.


We can't see the actual values in the source cells, but my guess is that somewhere along the line the calculation is resulting in a very small negative value, such as -0.0001.


When displayed to two decimal places, the last 01 is dropped, but it's still a negative number.


The Cell Format only controls how the cell value is displayed, without affecting the underlying value.


In this case you probably want to add a ROUND() function to that cell to round off the fractional values.

Jan 12, 2025 11:35 AM in response to Camelot

Thanks @Camelot, that fixed it! Odd though because the thing is these numbers are ascending as they head from row 2, past row 58 and onwards because they get larger being based off values in col A (which increases down the column).


After row 58 they start to eventually increase to positive integers) which makes the cause of the random oddly placed -0.00 numbers hard to fathom?



Jan 13, 2025 7:34 AM in response to Camelot

Hi @Cameron, pls don't worry about the Matching formula Rounding request.


Problem: With the rounding added and removal of a few -0.00 values, the data, is to all intents the same but now the chart plots the data with no buffer below the zero value on the Y axis which looks bad.


Image 1 is with rounding, image 2 is before the rounding was added to the same data and visually far better).



How can I get a buffer when I can't auto set and exact amount eg -18000 because there will be data that will exceed -18000?


Also do you know what is making the +3000 buffer (visually better) on this original non rounded data/chart? There wasn't an issue with random -0.00's in the data column. I need to get the buffers back but can't think of a way of doing that knowing that the data set can change to very different large numbers for the min / max values.


Thanks

Jan 13, 2025 8:18 AM in response to Camelot

Now I'm really wondering.... why there were a few odd -0.00's in my column/table that you kindly fixed.


I have two tables and they use the same formula as in the screenshot above, one of which had to have a Round() formula added to it... because I just noticed that, using this same formula (that needed to be Rounded() to eliminate the -0.00's) -- the exact same (non rounded) formula didn't produce any -0.00's at all in this column in this image attached.


Pls note, the red lines showing non negative 0.00's on the same rows where there were -0.00's and which were eliminated by Rounding?


What could be really causing the -0.00's in the first table in the orig post but not the second in the image provide here?



Thanks again!



Jan 12, 2025 12:56 PM in response to Camelot

I noticed another column that is using a Matching formula (to apply data to a chart) and that is has random -0.00's too...


Struggling with how to add Round() to the following formula though? :


IF('Control 1 - Profit and Loss'::$I$3 = "", "", 
    IF(ISBLANK(OFFSET($A$2, ROW(cell)− ROW($EK$2), MATCH('Control 1 - Profit and Loss'::$I$3, A$1:DE$1,0) − 1,rows,columns)),
        "",
        IFERROR(OFFSET($A$2, ROW(cell)− ROW($EK$2), MATCH('Control 1 - Profit and Loss'::$I$3, A$1:DE$1,0) − 1,rows,columns), "")
    )
)

Cheers


Jan 13, 2025 3:32 PM in response to Bardonicloud

TBH, I don't know the rules that Numbers uses to determine buffer space above and below the max and min values in the graph.


Offhand, without recreating your data, I can only think of two solutions.


Once you're already aware of - change the min/max value for the axis to something that's visually appealing to you, knowing that you may have to adjust it based on the actual values on the graph.


The other is to add some dummy data to the graph.


For this, setup a new table with a couple cells that calculate the MIN() and MAX() values for that column with whatever offset you like (e.g. MIN(F) - 300 and MAX(F) + 3000), and add these to the graph as a separate series. It won't affect your main plot, but it will force Numbers to adjust the scale to incorporate these extremes.

Where is the -0 Value coming from?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.