UMINUS
Unsupported (not recognized)Category: Operator · Last tested 2026-09-01
Real compatibility results for the UMINUS function: executed in Excel for the web, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc, measured against Google’s published documentation. Excel does not document UMINUS, so this page makes no claim about Excel. Syntax and links to that documentation are below.
Support matrix
| Engine | Documented | Live-tested | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | No | n/a (not an Excel function) | n/a |
| Excel for the web | — | Yes (recalc, 2026-09-01) | Unsupported (not recognized) |
| Google Sheets | Yes | Yes (Drive import, 2026-09-01) | Supported, behaves as documented |
| LibreOffice Calc | No | Yes (25.8.7.3, 2026-09-01) | Unsupported (not recognized) |
LibreOffice version history
We executed the same test cases under each LibreOffice release to show exactly when UMINUS’s support changed — not documentation claims, real results.
| LibreOffice version | Verdict | Tested |
|---|---|---|
| 24.2.0.3 | Unsupported (not recognized) | 2026-09-01 |
| 24.8.7.2 | Unsupported (not recognized) | 2026-09-01 |
| 25.2.0.3 | Unsupported (not recognized) | 2026-09-01 |
| 25.8.7.3 | Unsupported (not recognized) | 2026-09-01 |
Why isn't UMINUS working in LibreOffice?
LibreOffice Calc does not implement UMINUS as of 25.8.7.3 — in our
executed tests it returns a #NAME? (unrecognized function) error. This is not a typo or a
settings problem, and saving the file as .xlsx does not change it: the function simply isn’t
available yet.
Watch the LibreOffice version support page —
we re-run every test on each new release, so it will flip to Supported here as soon as it lands.
Discovered quirks
-
=UMINUS(-4) on
Excel for the web returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is 4.
Provenance
DERIVED, not published: UMINUS(-4) is printed in Sample Usage with no result. The rule is the page's one-line description, "Returns a number with the sign reversed". BATCH PROVENANCE (batch I, group 1 -- the last eight Google-documented functions in the corpus, closing the group A set sheets-lo-only-plan.md opened). This function has x == false in docs/data/compat.json: Microsoft does not document it at all, so this corpus makes NO claim about it in that engine and nothing here is measured against that vendor's documentation. The authority is Google's own support.google.com function page, cited by full URL and by the date it was read (2026-08-31) -- Google publishes no version number for these pages, so a bare URL dates nothing. WHAT GOOGLE PRINTS ON THESE EIGHT PAGES IS LESS THAN IT LOOKS, AND EVERY NOTE SAYS SO. Each page carries a 'Sample Usage' block of FORMULAS WITH NO RESULTS and an 'Examples' section that is a live embedded spreadsheet rather than article text, so ACROSS ALL EIGHT PAGES THERE IS NOT ONE PUBLISHED FORMULA/RESULT PAIR IN THE BODY. Every expected value in this group is therefore DERIVED from the page's own stated semantics and names the sentence it came from; the one exception is UNARY_PERCENT, whose one-line description states its result inline. No value was taken from a search snippet, a blog or a mirror. LIBREOFFICE: probed before execution on all four pinned builds (24.2.0.3, 24.8.7.2, 25.2.0.3, 25.8.7.3) in five storage spellings -- plain, _xlfn., COM.MICROSOFT., ORG.OPENOFFICE. and _xlfn.ORG.OPENOFFICE. -- and #NAME? under every one of them on every build, so the expected values below describe Google Sheets and the LibreOffice column records absence. (A separate check confirms the absence is real rather than a name-mapping artefact: round-tripping these eight names through LibreOffice's own formula parser and its .xlsx export writes them back lower-cased -- 'to_date', 'uminus' -- which is what LibreOffice does with an identifier it does not recognise as a function at all.) Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected 4, got '#NAME?'
-
=UMINUS(7) on
Excel for the web returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is -7.
Provenance
DERIVED from the same sentence. The page gives only a negative sample, so the positive direction is asserted here to pin "sign reversed" rather than "absolute value" -- two readings the page's single sample cannot distinguish. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected -7, got '#NAME?'
-
=ROUND(UMINUS(3.5)-(3.5*-1),12) on
Excel for the web returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is 0.
Provenance
A structural assertion with no derived constant, from the parameter description "value - The number to have its sign reversed. Equivalently, the number to multiply by -1." Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected 0, got '#NAME?'
-
=ROUND(UMINUS(UMINUS(9)),10) on
Excel for the web returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is 9.
Provenance
A structural assertion with no derived constant, from the same one-line description: reversing a sign twice restores it. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected 9, got '#NAME?'
-
=UMINUS(-4) on
LibreOffice Calc returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is 4.
Provenance
DERIVED, not published: UMINUS(-4) is printed in Sample Usage with no result. The rule is the page's one-line description, "Returns a number with the sign reversed". BATCH PROVENANCE (batch I, group 1 -- the last eight Google-documented functions in the corpus, closing the group A set sheets-lo-only-plan.md opened). This function has x == false in docs/data/compat.json: Microsoft does not document it at all, so this corpus makes NO claim about it in that engine and nothing here is measured against that vendor's documentation. The authority is Google's own support.google.com function page, cited by full URL and by the date it was read (2026-08-31) -- Google publishes no version number for these pages, so a bare URL dates nothing. WHAT GOOGLE PRINTS ON THESE EIGHT PAGES IS LESS THAN IT LOOKS, AND EVERY NOTE SAYS SO. Each page carries a 'Sample Usage' block of FORMULAS WITH NO RESULTS and an 'Examples' section that is a live embedded spreadsheet rather than article text, so ACROSS ALL EIGHT PAGES THERE IS NOT ONE PUBLISHED FORMULA/RESULT PAIR IN THE BODY. Every expected value in this group is therefore DERIVED from the page's own stated semantics and names the sentence it came from; the one exception is UNARY_PERCENT, whose one-line description states its result inline. No value was taken from a search snippet, a blog or a mirror. LIBREOFFICE: probed before execution on all four pinned builds (24.2.0.3, 24.8.7.2, 25.2.0.3, 25.8.7.3) in five storage spellings -- plain, _xlfn., COM.MICROSOFT., ORG.OPENOFFICE. and _xlfn.ORG.OPENOFFICE. -- and #NAME? under every one of them on every build, so the expected values below describe Google Sheets and the LibreOffice column records absence. (A separate check confirms the absence is real rather than a name-mapping artefact: round-tripping these eight names through LibreOffice's own formula parser and its .xlsx export writes them back lower-cased -- 'to_date', 'uminus' -- which is what LibreOffice does with an identifier it does not recognise as a function at all.) Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected 4, got '#NAME?'
-
=UMINUS(7) on
LibreOffice Calc returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is -7.
Provenance
DERIVED from the same sentence. The page gives only a negative sample, so the positive direction is asserted here to pin "sign reversed" rather than "absolute value" -- two readings the page's single sample cannot distinguish. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected -7, got '#NAME?'
-
=ROUND(UMINUS(3.5)-(3.5*-1),12) on
LibreOffice Calc returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is 0.
Provenance
A structural assertion with no derived constant, from the parameter description "value - The number to have its sign reversed. Equivalently, the number to multiply by -1." Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected 0, got '#NAME?'
-
=ROUND(UMINUS(UMINUS(9)),10) on
LibreOffice Calc returned
#NAME?, but the documented/expected
result is 9.
Provenance
A structural assertion with no derived constant, from the same one-line description: reversing a sign twice restores it. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606.; MISMATCH vs expected: expected 9, got '#NAME?'
Executed test cases
Excel for the web (executed 2026-09-01 via OneDrive recalculation)
These values come from Excel for the web, not from desktop Excel. They are two different implementations of the calculation engine, and this run measured only the web one: the corpus was uploaded to OneDrive as .xlsx, recalculated by Excel for the web on open, and downloaded again for readback. Excel for the web is a rolling service with no pinnable version, so the run is identified by its date. Where a value here disagrees with the Expected column — which is Microsoft’s documentation of the desktop product — we cannot tell you whether the web engine diverges from the desktop one or the documentation is wrong about both, because we do not run desktop Excel.
| Formula | Description | Result | Expected | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| =UMINUS(-4) | The page's own Sample Usage input | #NAME? | 4ProvenanceDERIVED, not published: UMINUS(-4) is printed in Sample Usage with no result. The rule is the page's one-line description, "Returns a number with the sign reversed". BATCH PROVENANCE (batch I, group 1 -- the last eight Google-documented functions in the corpus, closing the group A set sheets-lo-only-plan.md opened). This function has x == false in docs/data/compat.json: Microsoft does not document it at all, so this corpus makes NO claim about it in that engine and nothing here is measured against that vendor's documentation. The authority is Google's own support.google.com function page, cited by full URL and by the date it was read (2026-08-31) -- Google publishes no version number for these pages, so a bare URL dates nothing. WHAT GOOGLE PRINTS ON THESE EIGHT PAGES IS LESS THAN IT LOOKS, AND EVERY NOTE SAYS SO. Each page carries a 'Sample Usage' block of FORMULAS WITH NO RESULTS and an 'Examples' section that is a live embedded spreadsheet rather than article text, so ACROSS ALL EIGHT PAGES THERE IS NOT ONE PUBLISHED FORMULA/RESULT PAIR IN THE BODY. Every expected value in this group is therefore DERIVED from the page's own stated semantics and names the sentence it came from; the one exception is UNARY_PERCENT, whose one-line description states its result inline. No value was taken from a search snippet, a blog or a mirror. LIBREOFFICE: probed before execution on all four pinned builds (24.2.0.3, 24.8.7.2, 25.2.0.3, 25.8.7.3) in five storage spellings -- plain, _xlfn., COM.MICROSOFT., ORG.OPENOFFICE. and _xlfn.ORG.OPENOFFICE. -- and #NAME? under every one of them on every build, so the expected values below describe Google Sheets and the LibreOffice column records absence. (A separate check confirms the absence is real rather than a name-mapping artefact: round-tripping these eight names through LibreOffice's own formula parser and its .xlsx export writes them back lower-cased -- 'to_date', 'uminus' -- which is what LibreOffice does with an identifier it does not recognise as a function at all.) Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
| =UMINUS(7) | The same rule in the other direction | #NAME? | -7ProvenanceDERIVED from the same sentence. The page gives only a negative sample, so the positive direction is asserted here to pin "sign reversed" rather than "absolute value" -- two readings the page's single sample cannot distinguish. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
| =ROUND(UMINUS(3.5)-(3.5*-1),12) | The equivalence the page states for its own argument | #NAME? | 0ProvenanceA structural assertion with no derived constant, from the parameter description "value - The number to have its sign reversed. Equivalently, the number to multiply by -1." Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
| =ROUND(UMINUS(UMINUS(9)),10) | The involution that 'sign reversed' implies | #NAME? | 9ProvenanceA structural assertion with no derived constant, from the same one-line description: reversing a sign twice restores it. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
Google Sheets (executed 2026-09-01 via Drive import)
Google Sheets is a rolling service with no pinnable version, so this run is identified by its date. The corpus was imported to Drive as .xlsx, recalculated by Sheets, and exported back for readback.
| Formula | Description | Result | Expected | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| =UMINUS(-4) | The page's own Sample Usage input | 4 | 4ProvenanceDERIVED, not published: UMINUS(-4) is printed in Sample Usage with no result. The rule is the page's one-line description, "Returns a number with the sign reversed". BATCH PROVENANCE (batch I, group 1 -- the last eight Google-documented functions in the corpus, closing the group A set sheets-lo-only-plan.md opened). This function has x == false in docs/data/compat.json: Microsoft does not document it at all, so this corpus makes NO claim about it in that engine and nothing here is measured against that vendor's documentation. The authority is Google's own support.google.com function page, cited by full URL and by the date it was read (2026-08-31) -- Google publishes no version number for these pages, so a bare URL dates nothing. WHAT GOOGLE PRINTS ON THESE EIGHT PAGES IS LESS THAN IT LOOKS, AND EVERY NOTE SAYS SO. Each page carries a 'Sample Usage' block of FORMULAS WITH NO RESULTS and an 'Examples' section that is a live embedded spreadsheet rather than article text, so ACROSS ALL EIGHT PAGES THERE IS NOT ONE PUBLISHED FORMULA/RESULT PAIR IN THE BODY. Every expected value in this group is therefore DERIVED from the page's own stated semantics and names the sentence it came from; the one exception is UNARY_PERCENT, whose one-line description states its result inline. No value was taken from a search snippet, a blog or a mirror. LIBREOFFICE: probed before execution on all four pinned builds (24.2.0.3, 24.8.7.2, 25.2.0.3, 25.8.7.3) in five storage spellings -- plain, _xlfn., COM.MICROSOFT., ORG.OPENOFFICE. and _xlfn.ORG.OPENOFFICE. -- and #NAME? under every one of them on every build, so the expected values below describe Google Sheets and the LibreOffice column records absence. (A separate check confirms the absence is real rather than a name-mapping artefact: round-tripping these eight names through LibreOffice's own formula parser and its .xlsx export writes them back lower-cased -- 'to_date', 'uminus' -- which is what LibreOffice does with an identifier it does not recognise as a function at all.) Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Matched |
| =UMINUS(7) | The same rule in the other direction | -7 | -7ProvenanceDERIVED from the same sentence. The page gives only a negative sample, so the positive direction is asserted here to pin "sign reversed" rather than "absolute value" -- two readings the page's single sample cannot distinguish. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Matched |
| =ROUND(UMINUS(3.5)-(3.5*-1),12) | The equivalence the page states for its own argument | 0 | 0ProvenanceA structural assertion with no derived constant, from the parameter description "value - The number to have its sign reversed. Equivalently, the number to multiply by -1." Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Matched |
| =ROUND(UMINUS(UMINUS(9)),10) | The involution that 'sign reversed' implies | 9 | 9ProvenanceA structural assertion with no derived constant, from the same one-line description: reversing a sign twice restores it. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Matched |
LibreOffice Calc 25.8.7.3 (tested 2026-09-01)
| Formula | Description | Result | Expected | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| =UMINUS(-4) | The page's own Sample Usage input | #NAME? | 4ProvenanceDERIVED, not published: UMINUS(-4) is printed in Sample Usage with no result. The rule is the page's one-line description, "Returns a number with the sign reversed". BATCH PROVENANCE (batch I, group 1 -- the last eight Google-documented functions in the corpus, closing the group A set sheets-lo-only-plan.md opened). This function has x == false in docs/data/compat.json: Microsoft does not document it at all, so this corpus makes NO claim about it in that engine and nothing here is measured against that vendor's documentation. The authority is Google's own support.google.com function page, cited by full URL and by the date it was read (2026-08-31) -- Google publishes no version number for these pages, so a bare URL dates nothing. WHAT GOOGLE PRINTS ON THESE EIGHT PAGES IS LESS THAN IT LOOKS, AND EVERY NOTE SAYS SO. Each page carries a 'Sample Usage' block of FORMULAS WITH NO RESULTS and an 'Examples' section that is a live embedded spreadsheet rather than article text, so ACROSS ALL EIGHT PAGES THERE IS NOT ONE PUBLISHED FORMULA/RESULT PAIR IN THE BODY. Every expected value in this group is therefore DERIVED from the page's own stated semantics and names the sentence it came from; the one exception is UNARY_PERCENT, whose one-line description states its result inline. No value was taken from a search snippet, a blog or a mirror. LIBREOFFICE: probed before execution on all four pinned builds (24.2.0.3, 24.8.7.2, 25.2.0.3, 25.8.7.3) in five storage spellings -- plain, _xlfn., COM.MICROSOFT., ORG.OPENOFFICE. and _xlfn.ORG.OPENOFFICE. -- and #NAME? under every one of them on every build, so the expected values below describe Google Sheets and the LibreOffice column records absence. (A separate check confirms the absence is real rather than a name-mapping artefact: round-tripping these eight names through LibreOffice's own formula parser and its .xlsx export writes them back lower-cased -- 'to_date', 'uminus' -- which is what LibreOffice does with an identifier it does not recognise as a function at all.) Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
| =UMINUS(7) | The same rule in the other direction | #NAME? | -7ProvenanceDERIVED from the same sentence. The page gives only a negative sample, so the positive direction is asserted here to pin "sign reversed" rather than "absolute value" -- two readings the page's single sample cannot distinguish. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
| =ROUND(UMINUS(3.5)-(3.5*-1),12) | The equivalence the page states for its own argument | #NAME? | 0ProvenanceA structural assertion with no derived constant, from the parameter description "value - The number to have its sign reversed. Equivalently, the number to multiply by -1." Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
| =ROUND(UMINUS(UMINUS(9)),10) | The involution that 'sign reversed' implies | #NAME? | 9ProvenanceA structural assertion with no derived constant, from the same one-line description: reversing a sign twice restores it. Google's UMINUS page, read live on 2026-08-31 at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093606. |
Mismatch |
Docs & syntax
- Google Sheets: official documentation
Where UMINUS behaves differently
- Google-only functions: what ports to Excel and LibreOffice, and what does not
Executed: 47 functions Google documents and neither Microsoft nor LibreOffice does, 189 cases, 183 of them #NAME? in LibreOffice on all four pinned builds after five- and nine-spelling probes. QUERY and ARRAYFORMULA do not port; the operator functions do exactly; REGEXMATCH, REGEXTEST and REGEX are three different functions with three regex flavours.