Allow me to change regional settings: date formatting (mm/dd/yy, dd/mm/yy), thousands/decimal separators (period vs comma), formula language
Excel Online decides how to show dates and numbers and formulas based on where I live. I want to be able to choose how to display these Excel items. For dates, I might want mm/dd/yyyy, or I might want dd/mm/yyyy. My Excel formulas should be in the language of the application, and not based on where I live.
David
shared this idea
Hey all, we’re happy to share that we’ve added an option to define regional format from within Excel for the Web.
Go to File menu —> Options —> Regional Format Settings and choose your preferred regional format.
Alternative way is selecting a cell, go to Number Format dialog (via ribbon or right-click), select Date/Time/Special category, and choose the preferred regional format. To make this your default regional format, tick the checkbox.
This new capability is supported in SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Exchange and also through Teams and Office.com.
Thank you for voting and influencing our priorities. Keep voting for other ideas you want us to address.
Thanks, Excel team.
105 comments
-
Anonymous
commented
That's great!
I wonder why my default regional format was set to US, even though I had all other parts of interface set to Slovenian ...
-
Wyn Hopkins
commented
Great stuff, maybe you could add this link into the Admin comment
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-regional-format-settings-in-excel-for-the-web-c206344b-0d45-4a82-8eee-34ff6b008e9c -
Anonymous
commented
Thank you very much Excel Team! This change has really been needed for a long time. Thanks for listening!
-
Glen O'Riley
commented
Nice one folks, it only took you what ....... 6 YEARS to fix something that should have been there to start with!!
-
Anonymous
commented
Well, I wanted to fish and I got a fish instead.
-
Anonymous
commented
that is great @ExcelTeam. However it's still not possible to
having the French regional formatting (for dates, weeknames etc),
having normally the coma as decimal separator,
replace just that coma decimal separator by the point decimal separator, keeping all other french settings.That is because on the keyboards usualy the numeric pad has mapped the dot, and not coma. So often is great to have Excel treating dots as decimal separators, keeping all the rest French.
-
Edward Paul commented
I think you should try converting the excel date to serial number using the DATEVALUE() function
For e.g =DATEVALUE("1/1/2015").To get decimal number, which represents the time just make use of the TIMEVALUE() function
For e.g =TIMEVALUE("6:30 AM").
To set both, time and date, you need to concatenate these two functions like this:
=DATEVALUE("1/1/2015") & TIMEVALUE("6:00 AM")
Note: Since Excel serial numbers starts on January 1, 1900 whereas the negative numbers aren't well recognized, that’s why dates before the year 1900 doesn’t supported by Excel.http://www.repairmsexcel.com/blog/excel-not-recognizing-date-format
-
Anonymous
commented
Come on Microsoft... its been 5 years already can you fix this. I find your company to be very very
ignorant.... -
Glen O'Riley
commented
WOW .. I see MS has started ... AFTER 5 YEARS ... shows they REALLY DO NOT listen to their users!
-
Victor Larsson
commented
CAN you fix this please!!!
-
Anonymous
commented
I cannot believe we have to ask for this. Sometimes I feel like the people working at Microsoft don't use Microsoft software.
-
Simon Hunter
commented
It's really odd. Standard date formats work fine for us....but if we do date/time combined ones - they're UK format on desktop but us format on web!
-
Elias
commented
It's really necessary for english speaking employees living and working in UK or other english speaking countries to have their formulars in their regular languages!
It couldn't be that all employees have to follow the german language forumulars just because the base setup was done in german like we did in our company.
Please fix that bug asap.Thanks
-
Anonymous
commented
In countries with different regional settings than EN-US that have different decimal separators many numbers are pasted as text (non-intentionally). Please allow for some regional settings on Excel online to resolve this issue.
-
Josef
commented
Completely agree with Sergio, we encounter the same problem in the Netherlands. This problem
significantly reduces productivity in Excel Online and therefore also reduces the adoption of Excel Online at our users. -
Tharindu Gurusinghe
commented
Please add a option to change the language settings in Excel online. Cz I'm living in Italy but I'm using the English as the Default language. But in Excel it is giving Italy formula tags instead of the English and it is totally a mess. Please resolve it.
-
Sergio
commented
We have a problem with spanish regional settings in excel.
The num keyboard . automatically translates to , in excel with the option "Decimal separator"
Excel online does not does it automatically and it's a much needed option for spanish excel users as it slows add numeric data as it gets automatically configured default cell and not number making it unusable to make math operations.
-
Yannick A.
commented
A lot of people are having issues with Excel Online regional settings, whether it comes to dates or formulas language.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-to-set-excel-online-regional-settings/76c7a892-7d00-4969-9561-7455a5e1307a
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-online-2-languages-in-excel-simultaniously/4622503d-2d27-407c-87bb-a9896cb44bfa
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-online-defaulting-to-american-date-input/f49951e7-df0b-4f7c-98e6-4c18fd52c347
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-online-change-regional-settings/47288141-f3bb-4451-830e-a82de31c6813(just a few examples)
Changing the locale of a spreadsheet shouldn't be something so complex that we need to post for help on a forum (to eventually get no answer anyway).
In Google Sheets it goes like Files > Spreadsheet Settings > Language, and that's how simple, straightforward, intuitive and clear it should be. No settings that comes from other settings in another part of the maze of apps from Office 365.
-
adafdadsfa
commented
its been 4 years already. cmon!!! it is so annoying! we are losing data over mistyped dates !! (inverting day-month , we never know when its dd/mm or mm/dd)
-
Michel
commented
@cyrus Bharda, the instructions you linked to in your post are for Office 365, not the free Office online.
Thanks anyway