Ventura change decimal separator ?!?!

In the financial environment in Switzerland the setting should be:

decimal separator = .

grouping separator = Space

It is impossible to achieve this with the options provided when "Schweiz" (= Switzerland) is chosen for the Region. I tried to use the workaround you proposed and started "Numbers" thereafter. Choosing "Zahl" (figure) with grouping separator active, Numbers did not do any grouping at all.

My preferred app (RagTime) applied the system settings after installation. Fortunately I was able to overwrite them by transferring RagTime's formatting preferences from an old computer, thereby curing the problem for me. But Apple should really go back to the version which allowed for all possible combinations as up to Monterey.

I am using English, but I had to change the region before seeing "Number Format". I didn't change the language, but that might help. ??

Tne command you mention is somewhat different than the one here

Customizing Number Format in Ventura - Apple Community

but I don't know how much difference it makes

@stifou14

Many - if not all - users experience the same issue. It's a severe bug in Ventura. Please make sure to report it to Apple Feedback - macOS - Apple

MaximusAT wrote:

The Terminal workaround worked for me, but this is something absolutely crazy that can break thousands of excel files...how could Apple let this happen?!

FWIW, it will not break thousands of excel files, because excel is smart enough to store the data in a format that is independent of how numbers are displayed. It just so happens that they may not show the same way - and, of course, it matters when you enter new data into them.

That said, of course this needs to be fixed.

At the moment, I do see the option to change number format, but yesterday I am pretty sure it wasn't there... something is clearly wrong.

If you are a Keyboard Maestro user you can easily overcome this limitation by using the "Insert Date" action and changing the default formatting to:

%ICUDateTime%MM.dd.yy%

This will yield a date of:

12.02.22

Modify, if you wish, to make it a four-digit date along the lines of:

%ICUDateTime%MM.dd.yyyy%

Which will yield today's date as:

12.02.2022

You can change the separators to whatever you prefer; as you can see I prefer the dots instead of slashes.

cspkloof wrote:

How do you force Excel to run in English?

By default, applications (if coded properly) follow the system setting.

You can change the language for specific applications, though.

Go to System Settings->Language & Region.

At the bottom, you see "Applications". Click the + sign to add an application and select the language you want to use it with.

Thank you very much for the effective but partial tip.

It works for:

• the DECIMAL separator where you can input a dot
• but for the THOUSANDS separator, it doesn't let me put anything (I wanted a comma) :(

Does it let you?

Does anyone know how to use the Terminal workaround to set the grouping separator to a space? The obvious solution

defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleICUNumberSymbols -dict 0 "." 1 " " 10 "." 17 " "

produces the error "defaults[83767:7029208] Unexpected argument .; leaving defaults unchanged."

Vollschaaf wrote:

The obvious solution

defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleICUNumberSymbols -dict 0 "." 1 " " 10 "." 17 " "

produces the error "defaults[83767:7029208] Unexpected argument .; leaving defaults unchanged."

I wonder if space in that command needs to be encoded somehow, like "\ "

' and " marks are in general interchangeable with some exceptions (depending on what you quote), no difference in this particular case.

but regardless - the Language & Region settings should not become disabled regardless of what you send via Terminal (even if it's total gibberish). it's a serious bug in Ventura.

leobraun wrote:

the Language & Region settings should not become disabled regardless of what you send via Terminal (even if it's total gibberish). it's a serious bug in Ventura.

Indeed. I wonder if anyone else has run into this.

Berthet Jean-François I tried but I cant access anymore to System > General > Language & Region.

Seems like this broke my ventura, other settings just opened fine.

Is there a way to revert to original ?

Thanks!

This workaround worked in order to change the decimal point of my Mac OS (Portuguese) from comma to dot. But the group separator is the aposthrofe ('). I tried to change the group separator to comma (,) with

defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleICUNumberSymbols -dict 0 "." 1 "'" 10 "." 17 ","

but it didn't work. Does anyone know how to change the to the following number format: 10,000.00, as it was before the latest Ventura update?