https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66985

Eike Rathke <[email protected]> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEEDINFO                    |RESOLVED
         Resolution|---                         |NOTABUG

--- Comment #14 from Eike Rathke <[email protected]> ---
1. The "numbers" are not numeric cell content but text intead, this is
   important for all following behavior. Usually you calculate with
   numeric content in a spreadhseet, and not with text. Calculating with
   text is a bad idea, as follows.

2. Because of the textual content, if the file is loaded in Calc in
   a locale where the separators match those of the text (i.e. '.' dot
   decimal separator and ',' group separator in this case) the
   ' apostrophe is prepended to the input line (it is not part of the
   cell content so can not be searched for) such that editing the
   textual string will not change the cell content to numeric.

3. Excel has some weird behavior that when calculating with binary
   operators (e.g. =A1+A2) where the content is text but would be
   interpretable as numbers according to the current locale it does
   interpret it as numbers. Using functions like SUM() that take a range
   argument the text is not interpreted as numbers but ignored instead.
   The latter is standard spreadsheet behavior and Calc does the same.

4. Load a file with such (A1+A2) calculations in Excel after having
   switched your environment to a locale that does not match the
   separators, e.g. one where the decimal separator is ',' comma, and
   you will see the mess that results, at best the "numbers" will not be
   interpreted anymore and #VALUE! results, at worst the numbers can be
   differently interpreted, for example "12,345" with ',' group
   separator vs ',' decimal separator.. This is why calculating with
   interpreted text is bad.

Calc so far mimicks the Excel behavior.

Now for solutions to the problem if you encounter such a file:

As you already noticed you can select the cells you want to change and
using Find&Replace with regular expressions enabled you can search for
^. and replace with $0 and hit ReplaceAll.

Another and maybe more comfortable solution is to use the
ConverTextToNumbers (CT2N) extension, you may find it at
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/extension-center/ct2n-convert-text-to-number-and-dates

Last but not least, you mentioned that your bank produced the file, I'd
ask them to produce proper spreadsheet files with numeric content and
not just dump strings into text.

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