Excel custom format What does -2 mean

Question

I've seen [$€-2] here in Europe, which is supposed to be the Euro symbol. How is the surrounding information parsed?

Recently, I received a spreadsheet from someone in Argentina that contained a number formatted as money and displayed as [$$-240a]. The 240a is in Spanish, okay. I understand that this is probably a location as well because of Columbia.

I'm confused about how these are parsed.

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 it here.