I have installed Numbers 3.0 and did not have Numbers before. When opening a new blank sheet and entering a number like "3" in a cell it is converted to "
1/3/2013 00.00.00", i.e a date. This happens to all cells and is quite troublesome. Anyone who can help?
Numbers App-OTHER, OS X Mavericks (10.9), Macbook Pro
Hi Rødover,
Someone else had what appears to be the same or very similar problem earlier today. See this thread. I'm guessing there is a bug related to non-English regional settings. If you figure out anything from the suggestions there (one being to set your language to English, "delete" the cells with the dates, and see if the problem disappears) it would help other users if you could briefly describe results here and also file a bug report directly with Apple. You can do that through this in your menu:
SG
How are you changing the format of the columns? You must select the whole column then change the format of the column for it to take usually.
Jason
Hi Jason,
Something funky with dates in 3.0 even in English. Try the setup in this thread then type a date into one of the cells in the column with numbers. Once Numbers 3.0 smart date recognition decides a date has been input, that cell stays a date, and even the sum becomes a date on my machine. Whether you try to format the whole column as Number or just the offending cell as Number, it just won't "take." The only fix is to manually input a number again. It *appears* that in non-English localizations Numbers sees dates where dates aren't intended, causing strange results in sum functions and screwing up lookups.
SG
Hi SGIII
Based on your suggestions I have worked my way through different combinations of region and format settings.
And it seems the bug is related to Region as you suggested. Setting region to US, UK or Germany all works. Denmark has the bug and at least Norway has it too.
So if it is of any help to others this is what i did:
Original setting: Primary language: English. Region: Denmark. Format language Danish.
Changed settings as follows:
Region: United States. Default formats. : Result OK
Region: United Kingdom. Default formats: Result OK
Primary language: Danish. Region Denmark. Default formats: Error back. All numbers interpreted as dates.
Primary language: Danish. Region United Kingdom. Default formats. Result OK.
Primary language: Danish. Region United Kingdom. Format language Danish: Result OK.
Primary language: English. Region Germany. Format language Danish: Result OK.
Primary language: English. Region Denmark. Default formats. Error back
Hi Rødovre,
This should help people. As you've seen many others are posting here in the discussions about this problem, so when you see that you can try to refer them here to this thread as you've been doing.
It isn't clear how carefully Apple monitors the discussions, so if you haven't done so already it would be a good idea to use Number>Provide Numbers Feedback to give this detailed information to Apple.
Hope they squash this bug soon. It's so obvious one would think they would have caught it in testing. Not good.
SG
Hi SG
Thanks for your advice to a newbie in this forum.
I have filed a bug report and posted a description and referred to this thread in the thread you mentioned in your first post.
Rødovre
All numbers entered in Numbers 3.0 defaults to date format. And it is difficult to change. Is this a known bug?
