Obelus vs. Slash in Numbers

Agreed, and my sympathies are in the same direction.

Logically, though, there are two factors that should lower the difficulty, especially if you are the one writing the formula.

• it's often not difficult to figure our which operation should be performed at a specific location in a formula, given some idea of what the formula is to do and how you'd go about it when working it manually.
• Given the location of the + and / keystrokes (on the North American English keyboard layout), there is some difficulty in typing the wrong one while writing a formula.

As for reading the ÷ versus the + in the Formula Editor, you could keep a hand held magnifier handy, or use option-command-8 to enlarge the screen image (including the Formula Editor AND its contents. That's also useful when checking that you've not entered a period for a comma (or vice versa).

Meantime, several users Providing Numbers Feedback, asking for user ability to alter the size of the Formula Editor and of type in that editor, might produce a change in Numbers' behaviour.

Regards,

Barry

"How do I elect this?"

By using a much older version of Numbers.

Versions after Numbers '09 automatically convert the 'traditional' arithmetic operators /, * and - to the corresponding arithmetical signs ÷, × and -

Or by entering the slash into a cell as text (not part of a formula).

Your issues with this behaviour, particularly with w / vs ÷ part, are shared by many others, although posts regarding it have slowed significantly since early days after the substitution started.

So far there's no user accessible switch to turn the substitution off.

You could use the Provide Numbers Feedback item in the Numbers menu to report your dissatisfaction and request a feature enhancement providing a means of shutting off the substitution of these symbols.

Regards,

Barry

I am with you 100%. And with no way to increase the font size in the formula editor, it can be tough for bad eyes to tell the two apart.