Numbers do not accept negative values after upgrading to Snow Leopard

Hi,
just wanted to let you know that I have the same issue and that chaging to US format made everything work ok.

/Martin

Did anyone try to isolate exactly what it is in the format that breaks the negative values?

You could set the format in Languages & Text to US and manually change the values one by one to Swedish type values.

Or set the format to Swedish and manually change the values one by one to US type values.

Admittedly, this may lead nowhere, as there are certain things in the "format" that one cannot override. However, if someone has the time, it may be an interesting exercise.

Hi Magnus

I made tests with three settings.

System completely set to Swedish
System set to French as language, Region set to Suédois > Suède or Suédois > Finlande.
System set to English as language, Region set to Suédois > Suède or Suédois > Finlande.

With these settings, the negative numbers can't be entered.

A workaround may be to use an other region so that the number format matches the Swedish one and define the currency in Numbers itself.

The drawback is that in others applications you will use the replacement format too.

So, you may use an other workaround:

use the Swedih format.

if you enter values in column B, insert a column to the right of this column, creating a new column C
In this column use the formula:
=VALUE(B)
It will convert the typed values in true numbers.
Edit the other formulas to grab numerical values from the new column.
Hide this one.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 16 septembre 2009 10:53:48

Did anyone try entering negative numbers with a leading equals sign (such as =-123) to see if that would work?

Badunit wrote:
Did anyone try entering negative numbers with a leading equals sign (such as =-123) to see if that would work?

As the OP wrote, using a formula gives a correct behavior.

If I correctly understood, the OP's problem was with datas imported via a copy/paste process.
In this case, the formula workaround can't be used.

I don't know if he paste a single column or a group of columns so the workaround described in my late post was just a track.

It may be used exactly as described if the datas are in a single column or if the negative values are always in the "column on_the_right_of_therange".
In other cases, the auxiliary column must be inserted in an other location.

As it is clearly a bug, I guess that it will be killed, at least in the next major upgrade (iWork '10 ?)

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 16 septembre 2009 14:56:36

Same thing happens if you specify '+1', which becomes a textstring instead of the number 1.
Negative entries can be entered using the syntax '=-1', which creates the number -1.

Adding another piece, specifying '+1' in Leopard 10.5 results in a textstring. '-1' as the number '-1'.
Seems there has been a bug in this area for some time.

It's normal that +1 appears as a text string.

A positive number is made of digits, decimal separator, thousands separator.
If you add an other character, it's no longer a number but a string.
The old AppleWorks removes the + character if it's just before digits.

Numbers doesn't.
I don't know if it's deliberate or if it's a bug.

I sent this report to Bugs Hunters:

Your tracking number for this issue is Bug ID# 7228051. You may check status on this report via the 'My Originated Problems' tab.

Hello

The old AppleWorks is fair enough to decide that when we enter +123,
it must decipher it as the positive number 123.
In Numbers, when we enter +123,
we get the string +123.

+I may understand that for manual entries.+
+After all, we are supposed to know what we are typing.+

+A problem appears when we paste datas from this or that external source.+
+I got files in which every numeric value is signed.+
They contain -123 or +123 but never 123.

+With such a file, a Numbers user is really annoyed because he must add an extraneous column often thought as useless.+

+May you change the app behavior or offer a preference allowing the user to choose the behavior ?+

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 16 septembre 2009 16:54:49

That would be a good change. I noticed the same behavior with "+" and thought it was odd.

Too bad. When I saw there was an update this was the first thing I thought about.

I don't remember of a serious bug specific to localized version corrected by an update.

My guess is that we have to wait until the next upgrade.

We may be happy, now the Export menu item exists in the File menu of Numbers localized versions 😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mardi 29 septembre 2009 18:57:59

I'd like to add to this discussion that this bug also affects other programs. I've had a strange problem with the "Personal finance" software MoneyWell. Before upgrading to 10.6 everything worked as intended, but after upgrading the import function refused to accept negative numbers. After reading this topic I tried to change my number format (to USA), and after that import started working again.

Would it be easy to edit the localization files for Sweden to rectify this bug, or do we have to wait for Apple to fix this?

I'm not sure that 'Moneywell' is an Apple product so it's not its job to repair it.

BUT, knowing that the problem strikes also on a third party app may help the Bugs Hunters.

As I wrote several times I'm very busy these days but if I may find some free minutes I will add the detail to my original report.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) dimanche 8 novembre 2009 21:25:57