Numbers - Date formating not working

From the left alignment in your screenshot it seems that Numbers is not recognizing the imported dates as true date-time values, which would right-aligned by default.

That could be because Numbers or your computer are set to a Region that does not expect the dd Month yyyy format whereas your colleague's computer has different settings.

Try going to File > Advanced > Language and Region... to see what the settings are.

You may have to go to System Preferences > Language and Region and temporarily choose a region that uses that date format. Then after the import you can switch back.

SG

If you go to File > Advanced > Language and Region and set the language to English, the dates can be formatted into actual dates using the cell formatting tools. Then change the language back to German (System - German).

How have you input the date? What does it look like in the cell? It should be right-aligned in the cell by default.

The 19:08 is simply a time format, equivalent to 7:08 PM.

You can choose 'None' and instead display just the Date.

And vice versa. You could choose 'None' for the date and display just the time.

Note that both the date and the time are included in the value of the cell, even if you display just the time, or just the date.

SG

If you go to File > Advanced > Language and Region ... and temporarily change settings to this:

Then you can use a short script to get Numbers to recognize the dates (which you can format as you wish). Once Numbers recognizes the dates you can restore your regular settings:

Copy-paste this script into Script Editor (in Applications > Utilities) and make sure Script Editor is listed and checked at System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility. Then select cells with the dates and click the 'run' button in Script Editor.

tell front document of application "Numbers"
	tell active sheet
		tell (first table whose selection range's class is range)
			repeat with aCell in cells of (get selection range)
				tell aCell
					set v to value
					set dy to v's word 1
					set mo to text 1 thru 3 of v's word 2
					set yr to v's word 3
					set value to mo & " " & dy & ", " & yr
					set format to automatic
				end tell
			end repeat
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

SG

LineTo wrote:

Date by system is set to - dd Month yyyy format - so that can't be it. Even changed it just to check if it has any impact. Nothing.

Any other pre-setting that could cause this issue?

Which "date by system"? There are lots of them: short, medium, long, full. What region is your machine set to?

And what do you see when you go to File > Advanced > Language and Region... ?

Have you compared these settings to the settings on your colleague's machine?

SG

I can confirm that with the language set to German it does not like that format. I am unable to change it from automatic/text to a date. As a workaround until another solution is found, the file's language can be set to English (using SGIII's instructions), the dates formatted, then the language set back to German (System - German), if that is the correct default language.

I also tried changing the region to Germany (leaving the language as English). I was able to format them as dates.

Additional: Perhaps this makes sense because the names of months are not the same in German. :January", "February", etc. are not month names in German so these are not dates in German.