Left Leading $ with decimal aligned numbers

[rosen.j]

I hope someone can help me with this mail merge problem! I'm loading from an excel spreadsheet into a word table. All the rows in the table come from the same row of data in the excel worksheet (it is not many to one).

The table is populating just fine but I can't get the cells formatted correctly for the numeric data. I'd like it to display as:

$ 3,000.00


$ 400.00
$ 1,500.00
$ (20.00)

I'm trying different permutations of \# \f \b with imbedded tabs but nothing I've tried will separate the $ while keeping the number formatting. (I've been ignoring the negative number until I get something working.)

As just one example (Pls excuse my tab representation ->):
{mergefield "cost_1" \# ->$ ->,0.00}

Any advice is much appreciated!