How to change my numbers sheet to convert commas to decimal.

I have the language in the correct settings and I have highlighted the column and hit number, and then nothing happens and nothing is changing. Can someone please advise. Thank you

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Jun 22, 2023 1:47 PM

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Posted on Jun 23, 2023 4:41 AM

You need to set the commas to dots and the dots to commas so it is not a single find/replace, even if you use SGIII's "Find & Replace in Selection" shortcut. Using the shortcut (or the regular Find/Replace if there are no other commas or dots in the spreadsheet), you would need to change the dots to some other character, the commas to dots, then that other character to commas. After that you may need to set the format to number.


Or you can use the built-in tools. You said the language was correct, how about the region?


  1. Set the column to "text".
  2. Look to be sure the numbers are all correct. When importing numbers from one region into a spreadsheet set to another, some numbers might get misinterpreted. 12.345,67 might be treated as text (which is okay, we can fix that) but 12.000 or 12,000 might be twelve thousand when it was supposed to be twelve, or vice versa.
  3. Set the region (File->Advanced->Language & Region) to one that uses the format of the numbers in that column. Bolivia is one.
  4. Change the column to "number"
  5. Set the region to one that uses the 123,456.78 format. United States is one. Maybe the default System-Language is also one.
7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 23, 2023 4:41 AM in response to stephaniecogs

You need to set the commas to dots and the dots to commas so it is not a single find/replace, even if you use SGIII's "Find & Replace in Selection" shortcut. Using the shortcut (or the regular Find/Replace if there are no other commas or dots in the spreadsheet), you would need to change the dots to some other character, the commas to dots, then that other character to commas. After that you may need to set the format to number.


Or you can use the built-in tools. You said the language was correct, how about the region?


  1. Set the column to "text".
  2. Look to be sure the numbers are all correct. When importing numbers from one region into a spreadsheet set to another, some numbers might get misinterpreted. 12.345,67 might be treated as text (which is okay, we can fix that) but 12.000 or 12,000 might be twelve thousand when it was supposed to be twelve, or vice versa.
  3. Set the region (File->Advanced->Language & Region) to one that uses the format of the numbers in that column. Bolivia is one.
  4. Change the column to "number"
  5. Set the region to one that uses the 123,456.78 format. United States is one. Maybe the default System-Language is also one.

Jun 27, 2023 4:36 AM in response to stephaniecogs

The numbers should have had decimals, you should not have had to do this. What did the number look like before you formatted it for two decimals? It appears it had no decimal (i.e, it was 3000000 with no decimal point in it). Did you follow the region changing method or did you do find/replace to fix the numbers?


If the numbers are all like the 3000000, create a temporary new column and divide all of them by 100. Copy and Paste Formula Results (not the standard Paste) the results back to the original column then delete the temporary column.

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How to change my numbers sheet to convert commas to decimal.

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