Numbers DATWERT inconsistent date conversion

Question

Level 1

8 points

Numbers DATWERT inconsistent date conversion

HI,

I found a very strange behaviour of the numbers function DATWERT in the German version of Numbers. I often import date specifications which use 3 letter month name abbreviations (e.g. 1. Jun 26). When I use the function DATWERT to convert this textual dates into a numbers date format, this only works for 8 month names. If I check with 4 letter abbreviations DATWERT works for 5 month names (including Mai, which only has 3 characters).

You can see the behaviour in the table shown below.

This very strange - in my opinion wrong - working of DATWERT makes this function almost useless, I had to program around this.

How can I ask Apple to have this fixed?

Any help appreciated

Regards Peter

Posted on Jan 12, 2026 1:56 PM

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Answer 1

Badunit

Level 7

30,660 points

Jan 12, 2026 2:33 PM in response to Peter_MZ

In the menu system:

Numbers->Provide Numbers Feedback

I assume Numbers uses/understands the full month name and one abbreviation for each month. I don't know German so I have no opinion on which of the abbreviations are "correct" but the ones it is accepting and using don't all match up with what I see on the internet.

How did you work around the problem?

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Answer 2

Badunit

Level 7

30,660 points

Jan 12, 2026 4:44 PM in response to Peter_MZ

I hope you came up with an easier way than I did.

Table 1 is typed in, no formulas.

Tabelle 1 column A is typed in, pre-formatted as text. It is a few test dates.

Tabelle 1::B2 =LET(datestr1;TEXTZWISCHEN(A2;" ";" ");datestr2;XVERWEIS(datestr1;Table 1::$A;Table 1::$B;"Not Found";0);DATWERT(WECHSELN(A2;datestr1;datestr2)))

The formula above is slightly different than what is shown in the screenshot. This is the correct one.

I used LET so I wouldn't have to use TEXTZWISCHEN(A2;" ";" ") three times in the same formula. The formula defines datestr1 as TEXTZWISCHEN(A2;" ";" ") and defines datestr2 as the result from XVERWEIS then substitutes datestr2 for datestr1 in the "date" and then uses DATWERT.

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Answer 3

Peter_MZ Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 12, 2026 3:18 PM in response to Badunit

Txh for your reply regarding feedback.

Actually there is no right or wrong official abbreviation, most of the time 3 letters are used, hence jun and jul should definitely work. I think the definition was done by a non native speaker for German. ☹️

My workaround was to create a transformation matrix (see below) and use SVERWEIS (VLOOKUP) to lookup the correct result.

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