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Excel for Mac | Decimals commas vs full stops.|General Excel Questions & Answers|Excel Forum|My Online Training Hub

You are here: Home / Excel for Mac | Decimals commas vs full stops.|General Excel Questions & Answers|Excel Forum|My Online Training Hub
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sp_CrumbsHome HomeExcel ForumGeneral Excel Questions & Answe…Excel for Mac | Decimals commas vs …
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Excel for Mac | Decimals commas vs full stops.
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Warrick Strydom

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September 16, 2020 - 7:00 pm
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Hi all

I'm using Excel for Mac (MSO365), and downloading source data which separates decimals with full stops, common practice.  My Mac's functions don't recognize the cell references as numbers unless I find and replace all with commas.  The data sets are large, and so find and replace takes >30min to complete!  I've read that one can change your global settings to read full stops instead of commas, in system preferences>language and region>advanced>number separators.  For some reason this isn't working (ensuring Excel is closed while affecting, and re-starting Mac).

Any Mac users, or anyone for that matter with a hack? 

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Mynda Treacy
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September 16, 2020 - 7:46 pm
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Hi Warrick,

I suspect you also need to change the locale in Excel (File > Options > Language) to match the language settings in your operating system. That said, this will only fix the issue temporarily unless you're willing to keep your Mac set to always interpret commas as decimals.

Mynda

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Warrick Strydom

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September 16, 2020 - 9:39 pm
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Thanks Mynda, I tried this (what I meant by "global settings") but a simple test of the number values thereafter revealed it didn't work.  Seems I'll have to simply use "find and replace" as part of cleaning data prior to appending onto main table.

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Purfleet
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September 17, 2020 - 6:55 am
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if the data is exported from a system with commas and imported as a text file with the comma, it is likley that excel is just treating it as text and cant convert it.

can you upload a sample of the raw data?

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Velouria
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September 17, 2020 - 9:40 pm
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How exactly do you download the data set?

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Warrick Strydom

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September 17, 2020 - 11:27 pm
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Hi both

Apologies I'm not familiar with this forum's format and replying to you individually.

@Purfleet, sure I've attached a sample of the data.

@Velouria, downloaded directly from our ERP.  I save the .txt file to my desktop, then right-click and "open with>Excel." I then "save as" XLSX file.

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Anders Sehlstedt
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September 18, 2020 - 6:13 am
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Hello,

Notice when opening the .txt file following your steps that number values containing period (.) is regarded as text while those only containing numbers are treated as numbers. But when doing a data import I was able to state that the period is the decimal divider and the comma the thousand divider and after that the numbers in the import shows correct, see attached pictures.

Screenshot 1.jpeg shows the result after the data import.
Screenshot 2.jpeg shows the result after following your steps.

screenshot-1.jpegImage Enlarger

screenshot-2.jpegImage Enlarger

Br,
Anders

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  • sp_PlupImage screenshot-1.jpeg (92 KB)
  • sp_PlupImage screenshot-2.jpeg (96 KB)
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The following users say thank you to Anders Sehlstedt for this useful post:

Purfleet
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Warrick Strydom

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September 19, 2020 - 7:59 pm
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Hi Anders

Thank you, this sounds like a real solution!  Could I please ask you show me how to do this step, never done it:

"But when doing a data import I was able to state that the period is the decimal divider and the comma the thousand divider..."

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Anders Sehlstedt
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September 20, 2020 - 12:12 am
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Hello,

Go to Data menu, on the left hand side you find From text, click on that and the Data import guide starts.
Navigate to your .txt file and open it. Just click next on the first step, in the second step click next again, in the third step you need click on Advanced button and there change to desired decimal and thousand delimiters. See attached pictures for each step.

Br,
Anders

Excel-version-1.jpegImage Enlarger

Step1-1.jpegImage Enlarger
Step2-1.jpegImage Enlarger
Step3_Advanced-1.jpegImage Enlarger
Step3-1.jpegImage Enlarger

sp_PlupAttachments Attachments
  • sp_PlupImage Excel-version-1.jpeg (18 KB)
  • sp_PlupImage Step1-1.jpeg (73 KB)
  • sp_PlupImage Step2-1.jpeg (91 KB)
  • sp_PlupImage Step3_Advanced-1.jpeg (31 KB)
  • sp_PlupImage Step3-1.jpeg (86 KB)
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Warrick Strydom

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September 21, 2020 - 5:05 pm
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Hi Anders

A big thank you, this works perfectly!  Appreciate.

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