Re: minus numbers denoted by parentheses are not recognised

[Alan G Isaac <aisaac american edu>]

On Tue, 06 Apr 2004, "george g." apparently wrote:
> Using Gnumeric1.1.19.          When downloading stock transactions,  the
> negitive numbers are shown in parentheses.  The program does not
> recognise these numbers as having any value. The program will not let me
> reformat  them as a group to numbers with minus signs instead of
> parentheses. It will let me edit individual cells by deleting the
> parentheses and adding a minus sign, after which the program recognises
> the numbers.    The cursor  seems to always be in the form of a plus
> sign. This program appears to have everything but I will not be  able to
> use it if I can't solve this problem.   I would like to use this program
> and will greatly appreceat any help I can get.       Thanks  alot

Sorry if this seems OT.
Might you donwload the data as text and preprocess it with
sed before importing it into gnumeric?  Perhaps (untested):
s/\( *([0-9]+) *\)/ -\1 /

fwiw,
Alan Isaac