Number formats in Excel

[Oscar Recio Cant?]

No, it does not work that way. I tried modifying the settings in
multiple ways but Excel works the same (commas instead of points and
viceversa).

Any other idea?

I do appreciate your help

Oscar Recio

 

[JE McGimpsey]

No, it does not work that way. I tried modifying the settings in
multiple ways but Excel works the same (commas instead of points and
viceversa).

Any other idea?

I do appreciate your help

Since you started a new thread rather than replying to a previous post,
we can have no idea what "it" is that doesn't work. Please post using
the "reply" option in your newsreader with a detailed explanation of
what you've tried and what "it" is that doesn't work.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Oscar-

It sounds like you are typing the punctuation and it is coming up just
the opposite of what you want. I'm not sure what is causing that, but
here is a suggestion.

At one time, such symbols were considered "illegal" for numbers, so if
you typed them your entry was treated as text rather than a value. The
newer versions have supposedly done away with that limitation, but I'm
from the old school and not fully convinced that it is 100% reliable.
So... when you type in a value, just type the numbers and decimal point
if requjired. Then select the cells containing values and go to
Format>Cells>Number and choose the type of formatting you want the
numbers to display with. (You also have a Comma, Currency, & Percent
Formatting buttons on the Toolbar you can use.)

If this still gets the same result, I'd say you have defective software
and may want to try reinstalling Excel.

BTW- I was only able to trace your posts due to effort on my part. In
the future, please do as suggested by JE and use the "Reply" links in
the existing thread (series of messages). That keeps the focus in one
thread a makes it a lot easier for someone to respond to your request.
Good Luck!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

At one time, such symbols were considered "illegal" for numbers, so if
you typed them your entry was treated as text rather than a value. The
newer versions have supposedly done away with that limitation, but I'm
from the old school and not fully convinced that it is 100% reliable.

???

If XL cannot unambiguously parse a value as a number according to the
System/International/Number Format preferences, it will parse the entry
as Text, at least as far back as XL98 (I don't have any earlier versions
loaded at present). So if the System's Number preferences are set to
standard US

1.234

will always be interpreted as one and two hundred thirty-four
thousandths, and

1,234

will be interpreted as one thousand, two hundred thirty-four.

OTOH,

1,23

cannot be unambiguously interpreted as a number in that system (should
it be 1023 or 1230?), and so is treated as text.

The sole exception that I know of is that, if the thousands separator is
set to "None", a comma will still be accepted as one, at least in US
versions.

AFAIK, since Office 98, the number parsing has been 100% unambiguous and
reliable.

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi JE-

Thanks for your input, and I do not disagree with anything you offered
on the issue.

When I referred to myself as being from the "old school" I am talking
about MultiPlan, Supercalc and the like when the IIe was Apple's
leading edge system. I'm not sure either when the change took place - I
believe it was with Office 98 on the Mac. I think it coincided with the
first Office version written specifically for Windows as an OS as
opposed to DOS running a Win 3.1 interface. Through v.6 of Excel,
however, the only characters acceptible as values in a spreadsheet
(Excel or any others I know of) were digits, 1 decimal point & the
number could be preceeded by a minus sign if a negative. Displaying
anything else had to be accomplished by formatting the cells
appropriately. The only exceptions were Date & Time values which had to
be typed using slashes & colons, respectively.

As far as the 100% reliability, I didn't say it wasn't, just that I'm
not convinced. Then again, I probably never will be, with no disrespect
for your well informed and knowledgeable assurance.

But back to the original post - Do you have any insights as to why
Oscar's commas are coming up as decimal points & vice versa? I just
received an email from him... He has uninstalled Office, reinstalled
along with SP1 and confirmed his system settings to be correct and
still has the same problem.

Best regards|:>)

 

[JE McGimpsey]

But back to the original post - Do you have any insights as to why
Oscar's commas are coming up as decimal points & vice versa? I just
received an email from him... He has uninstalled Office, reinstalled
along with SP1 and confirmed his system settings to be correct and
still has the same problem.

First, uninstalling and reinstalling, a typical Windows solution, almost
never works on a Mac. Apps themselves just don't get corrupted, and Macs
don't have a central Registry that can get cleared out during a
reinstall. It's almost always a waste of time. The main exception is
when incomplete updates have been applied (perhaps due to a OS
permissions issue), so that there may be different versions of the
supporting files than are expected.

Second, uninstalling Office, unless done by running the Remove Office
application, is unlikely to completely uninstall the critical Office
files. Corruption, when it occurs, is usually a Preference file or some
other application support file, which simply trashing and reinstalling
the app folder won't touch.

Without having access to the OPs system, I don't have any additional
insight. On my systems, along with others I've tested, everything works
the way it's supposed to: when I change my international settings and
restart XL, XL's usage follows exactly the system usage.

I suppose it could be a bug in his Office language version, but I
haven't heard of anyone else reporting that problem.

 

[Oscar Recio Cantù]

Thanks CyberTaz:

I was using the browser to send a message so I couldn't make a thread, just
create a new one. Sorry about that. Now I know how.

Do you know how can I reach Microsoft Support people? I tried by phone in
México but they gave me the URL (the same I was using) to get support.

Nice day,

Oscar


En (e-mail address removed) del 25/1/05 17:47,

 

[Stan Hadley]

I seem to recall that European common syntax for numbers uses commas instead
of periods for the decimal point. I ran across this one time years ago on an
Excel sheet translated to Russian. Perhaps your language setting is picking
up the numbering, but I forget where to check that. I don't see it in the
Excel preferences. While Word lets you pick a language it doesn't show this
level of detail.

Oh, here it is. There is a place in the OS X System Preferences under
International>Formats>Customize that lets you change the decimal and
thousands characters. Maybe that's your problem.

Hope this helps,

Stan