Tuesday, February 26, 2008

How to change the thousand and decimal separator in Excel for Mac

If you want to change the thousand and decimal separator in Excel for Mac, you need to change it at operating system level.
For example I have Leopard in English and Excel 2004 in Italian and I have changed the decimal separator from .(dot) to ,(comma).

How to proceed:

0) close excel for mac
1) open mac os system preferences from the dock
2) open Personal, International
3) go to format
4) select a region where the comma separator is used, for example United Kingdom. In the bottom of the popup window, the numbers should appear in the correct format
5) relaunch excel for mac

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

This does not work in general.
Excel is just a bad program.
The format *is* displayed correctly within the International part of my computer settings, but still Excel uses the stupid comma.

sixtyfootersdude said...

This is also not working for me. If anyone has found a soluiton please let me know. I prefer numbers anyways but need use excel (Crap) for one assignment.

Unknown said...

In personal, under format, you'll also need to change the last bar between american or naitiv metrics.

Anonymous said...

Thanks! This worked!!!

Anonymous said...

It does work, just be sure to quit Excel before making changes. Thanks a Lot!

Anonymous said...

It does work, just be sure to quit Excel before making the changes. Thanks a lot!

Anonymous said...

Hello

This post was interesting, how long did it take you to write?

Heleen said...

Perfect, I spend some time looking for the solution. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Close excel. Open system preferences from the dock, open language&text, formats, and customize the number settings. :)

Marcel Medina said...

thanks for your post! was really helpfull for me.

Bests,

Unknown said...

Cheers! I love MAC!!!

Siobhan said...

You just saved my life.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the post. Saved lots of my time. It works, this is what I did:
1. System Preferences
2. Language & Text
3. Formats
4. Numbers => Customize
5. Adjust Decimal/Thousands for Number Separators / Currency Separators
6. OK
7. Re-start mac

Kasper Morville said...

THANK YOU! Helped me!

separateur nombre said...

for french keyboard layout same behaviour ...

works with Lion, not with tiger