How to left align currency symbol but right align number?

Question

How to left align dollar sign and right align the number, like Excel currency format?

For example:

$    3,546
$   44,345

Also, is there a way to create a custom format?

Answer 1

Highlight the cells you wish to be this way then click "Format" -> "Number" -> "Accounting".

Resourses

• Support for rotated text, accounting number formats, and more in Google Sheets from Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Answer 2

Asterisk (i.e. *) repeats the following character to fill in the remaining space in the cell.

If you are willing to use a custom number format (perhaps because you want a different currency or don't like the way the accounting format displays negative numbers), the character that specifies this layout is the *, followed by a space.

Under Format / Number / More Formats / Custom Number Format / instead of e.g. [$R] #,##0.00 put [$R]* #,##0.00 (note the asterisk which is the only change) and you will get the desired effect.

In the Custom Number Format dialog there is a link to help (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/56470?p=drive_custom_numbers)

If you just want to make an small adjustment to a provided format that you mostly like, set the format of a cell to that format and then go to Format / Number / More Formats / Custom Number Format / and you will find the field pre-populated with the "format string" for the existing format. Some of them are quite complicated and you would not want to start from scratch e.g for accounting, it is _("$"* #,##0.00_);_("$"* \(#,##0.00\);_("$"* "-"??_);_(@_) !