Excel custom format: What does [$€-2] mean?

Question

Okay, this is just weird.

I know from the post here that a [$-409] is a locale modifier for dates. Great.

Here in Europe, I've seen [$€-2]...which is meant to be the Euro symbol. How is all the other stuff around it parsed?

I've now had someone from Argentina send me a spreadsheet with a number formatted as currency that's shown as [$$-240a]. Okay, the 240a is Spanish.Columbia, so I can see that this is likely a locale as well.

What I don't understand is how these are parsed.

Let's take [$-409]. Assume that [$-...] is the pattern for 'format the next thing after the condition according to locale '...'. Fine.

For [$$-240A], our '...' part would be $-240a, which must mean 'show a $ in the columbian style before the next thing', which is subtly different.

But, for [$€-2], there's no locale 2, according to the microsoft's locale list. What the heck is supposed to happen here?

Can anyone shed any light? This is insane! What was Microsoft smoking, and if they're going to do this to us, why haven't they told us about it?

Answer 1

The 2 in [$€-2] is a "Numeral shape code" and refers to "Arabic Indic" number representation. The € leads to currency format. Read more about at here.