Absolute value, sign, or negation for a whole column
Paste a column of numbers and transform every sign at once — take absolute values, pull out -1/0/1 signs, flip signs, or force everything negative.
About this tool
Spreadsheets make you build a helper column and drag a formula down just to strip a minus sign. This tool does the same job on a whole pasted column in one pass: choose an operation, paste the numbers, and copy the transformed column back out.
Four operations cover the usual sign chores:
- Absolute value —
|x|, the distance from zero.-3becomes3,3stays3,0stays0. - Sign — the signum function:
-1for any negative value,0for zero,1for any positive value. Useful for turning a column of amounts into a direction flag. - Negate — multiply every value by
-1, so signs swap in both directions. - Force negative —
-|x|, which turns a mixed column into all-negative values (the usual fix when an export gives you credits and debits with inconsistent signs).
Worked example
With Operation set to Absolute value and this input:
-3
4
-2.5
0
the output is:
3
4
2.5
0
Switch Operation to Sign on the same input and you get -1, 1, -1, 0. Switch it to
Flip sign and you get 3, -4, 2.5, 0.
Options
Input separator defaults to auto-detect, which splits on newlines, commas, semicolons, pipes, or spaces — so a pasted spreadsheet column and a comma list both just work. Output separator defaults to mirroring the input, so a column comes back as a column.
Round decimals applies fixed rounding (0–6 places) to the results; leave it on Keep full
precision to get whole numbers without a trailing .0. Append summary stats adds a
count/sum/min/max/mean block computed over the transformed values.
Output format switches between the plain column, a tab-separated audit table with each original value next to its result, and a JSON report with counts of transformed and invalid values.
Limits
Up to 20,000 values per run. Values must be plain decimals or scientific notation (-3, 4.5,
-1.2e3, +2). Currency symbols, thousands separators, percent signs, and fractions like 1/4 are
rejected rather than guessed at — by default the run stops and names the offending value, and the
Values that are not numbers option lets you skip, keep, or blank them instead.
FAQ
What is the difference between absolute value and force negative?
Absolute value returns |x|, so everything comes out zero or positive. Force negative returns
-|x|, so everything comes out zero or negative. Both ignore the input sign entirely — unlike
Flip sign, which preserves the distinction and simply swaps each value's direction.
How does the sign operation handle zero?
Zero has no direction, so sign(0) is 0. Only strictly negative values return -1 and only
strictly positive values return 1. A very small value like 0.001 is still positive, so it
returns 1.
My column has currency symbols and commas — why does it fail?
This tool only changes signs; it deliberately does not guess at formatting, because 1,234 is
ambiguous once commas are also a separator. Clean the column first with the numeric string
sanitizer tool, then run it through here. If you would rather push a messy column through as-is,
set Values that are not numbers to skip, keep, or blank.
Can I keep the original values next to the results?
Yes — set Output format to Audit table. You get a tab-separated table with an original
column and a result column, which pastes straight back into a spreadsheet as two columns. The
JSON output carries the same pairing plus counts of how many values were transformed and how many
were invalid.
Does the output stay in the same order as the input?
Yes. Values are transformed in place and emitted in input order, so row n of the output matches row n of the input. That holds for the blank and keep error modes too, which is why they exist; the skip mode is the one option that changes the row count.
Why do rounded zeros not print as -0.00?
Rounding a tiny negative value like -0.004 to two places gives negative zero, which is
mathematically equal to zero but reads as a bug in a report. Any result that rounds to zero is
normalised to a plain 0, so you never see -0 or -0.00 in the output.
Developer & Automation Access
Run it from the terminal
Same engine as this page, headless — via the gizza CLI:
gizza tool absolute-value-transformer "-3
4
-2.5
0
-1.2e3"New to the CLI? Get gizza →
Open it by URL
Pre-fill and auto-run this tool with query parameters — the names match the API/CLI:
https://gizza.ai/tools/absolute-value-transformer/?data=-3%0A4%0A-2.5%0A0%0A-1.2e3&operation=abs&separator=auto&output_separator=same&decimals=auto&on_error=fail&output=values&stats=trueMachine-readable descriptor: tool.json — title + parameters JSON Schema for agents.