How can I change the decimal separator ?? ...

Sphinx-ita wrote:
I have an italian mac OSX, and the italian software iWork. But I'm using instruments in my job that give me results in US format, so they have the . to separate decimals.

Numbers takes the decimal separator from the System Preferences.

Go to System Preferences > International > Formats.

Note that the separators are a format setting, and that format is applied ONLY to data that Numbers interprets as a number. The problem may be that the data from your instruments actually contains the period character, causing Numbers to see the data as a text string rather than as a number.

A visible clue that this is the case would be that the 'number' is aligned to the left edge of the cell (text) rather than to the right edge (number).

Regards,
Barry

Sphinx-ita wrote:
but it's a bit weird that I've to change the all system preferences just to get something running well into Numbers ...

Just a design choice. Apple assumes that you'll want to use the same period separator, decimal separator, currency symbol and other formatting elements in all your applications. Making them System wide settings lets you set them just once rather than having to set each application's default parameters individually.

Regards,
Barry

?

Apple menu:


Regards,
Barry