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Numbers 3 has bugs in calculations.

Hi,


Numbers 3 has bugs in calculations. And I do not mean rounding errors. I mean plain wrong. How can I get back to my older version? I have a time machine backup.


Thanks,

Gerd

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 25, 2013 3:42 PM

Reply
43 replies

Oct 29, 2013 12:39 PM in response to Gerd Castan

Thanks Gerd and papalapapp.


The Apple support sent this solution as a work arround:


"There are a number of threads about this problem. It has something to do with Numbers 3.0 "smart" recognition of dates in languages other than English. It's too smart.

One workaround (assuming you don't want to switch your language to English 🙂 ) that apparently has yielded some success for some users is to go to cells where the month names appear and type a space after each the month names."



It works as far as I can tell.

But "search and replace" does not work for pull down fields... and unfortunately I have a whole bunch of them in my sheet...

Oct 29, 2013 12:53 PM in response to theili

Hi theili,


It looks as if you've quoted something I might have written in another thread. Just so you know, I'm definitely not smart enough to be Apple support🙂. I'm just a user like you, making some educated guesses based on what fellow users have been saying in the discussions here. I'm pretty sure there is no bug in calculations. The bug seems to be related to smart date recognition and date formats and regional settings, particularly German, maybe others.


It's interesting to hear confirmation that the type-a-trailing-space-after-the-month-name trick is in fact working for some people. I have no idea why that might work. Not sure what users with the problem are doing with the pop-ups. I got the impression they didn't have to do anything with those, but that may be mistaken.


As you find solutions, do hope you post them, so fellow users can benefit.


SG

Oct 29, 2013 1:10 PM in response to theili

Hello theili,

My problem with that issue is solved by the trailing space, as i have only one spreadsheet i to use with numbers on my iPad. On the mac i am a longtime excel user.

If you have to change lots of cells in a column you might try to do so by a formula in an extra column an then copy the content back to the original column. With a formula you can add a space to a text very easy.


Otherway lets hope apple resolves that not so smart behaviour in a short time.


Reiner

Nov 12, 2013 5:42 AM in response to Gerd Castan

Yes, if your system is set to English and you type the first names Jan or May, then Numbers 3.0 assumes you mean January or May (the month).


That part may not be so much a bug in calculations as it is overeager smart date recognition. Typing an apostrophe (single quote) before typing anything that looks like a date can force Numbers to recognize what you are typing as Text and not a date.


SG

Nov 13, 2013 12:03 AM in response to Gerd Castan

This issue doesn't really affect me, but I was able to make it happen after reading some of the posts. After messing with this for half the night, I'm not 100% sure, but I think I did find something that might help.


I've noticed that regardless of my language and region system preference settings (or date format settings), if I change my Date & Time system preference settings to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), then things appear to work correctly in Numbers.


Maybe this will work for some better than messing with the region settings? If not, maybe it is a start to some other solution. Good luck.

Numbers 3 has bugs in calculations.

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