2009/1/9 NoOp <[email protected]> > On 01/09/2009 10:55 AM, Dotan Cohen wrote: > > 2009/1/9 NoOp <[email protected]>: > >> It is, as Brian points out, a locale issue. If I (using "en_US.UTF-8") > >> enter 8.5 in a cell, I get 8.5. However if I enter 8/5 in the cell, I > >> get 08/05/09 - unless of course I set my locale to Dutch, and then I get > >> 05/08/09. > >> > >> Now I go a step further: > Format|Cells|Numbers|-Language|-Dutch(Netherlands) > >> and I can enter 8.5 in the cell and it will return 05-08-09. If I set it > >> back to English US and then reenter 8.5, the result that I get is 8.5. > >> > >> Note to Dotan: If I set the cell language to Hebrew, I get 8.5. > >> > > > > Actually, I am using a Dutch locale as I need the yyyy-mm-dd date > > formating. I think that I will file yabtwbibs on the issue. > > > > Then I fail to see what the problem is & agree with Harold and Erling - > use a comma. If you look at Tools|Options|Language > Settings|Language|Decimal separator key will be set to a comma (,) when > the locale setting is set to Dutch (Belgium).
If «8,5» is entered into a cell on my machine, with the standard Western language set to Swedish, it does not, just as Harold and Gary suggest, undergo a transformation into a date format. Well and good, but if I wish to publish a table in, say, English, I would need to transform the decimal commas into decimal points, so as not to confuse readers unused to the continental system. I should have thought that unticking the box which marks the decimal symbol as being that of the standard language would have sufficed to avoid the problem, but it seems that this is not the case. Instead, one must modify the standard language for the document in question to one which uses a decimal point rather than a decimal comma. Not a big deal, especially with languages whose orthography is as close to that of English as is that of Swedish, but it would be convenient if, in future updates, the possibility to choose the decimal symbol could be modified independently of the standard language setting.... Henri
