Microsoft Excel 2013 and 2010 by default uses the system defined decimal separator. In Windows 8 and Windows 7 this option is defined under the Regional and Language Settings available under Control Panel. You can follow below steps to change the decimal separator in Excel.
Step 1: Right click on the bottom end corner of Window 8 system and select Control Panel from the menu list (In Windows 7, navigate to Control Panel).
Step 2: In Adjust your computer’s settings screen, click Clock, Language and Region option.
Step 3: In Clock, Language and Region screen, click Change date, time or number formats under Region section.
Step 4: Click the Additional settings button in the Region window.
Step 5: In Customise Format window, enter the new separator for Decimal Symbol. Then click Apply and Ok button to save the changes.
Microsoft Excel also provides users can customize the separator used for Decimals and Thousands using Excel Options. Listed below are the steps to change decimal separator in Excel 2013 and Excel 2010
Step 1: Click File menu and select Options from the menu list.
Step 2: In the Options screen, click the Advanced tab and navigate to Editing section.
Step 3: Under Editing section, un mark the check box with caption as “User system separators”.
Step 4: Now enter your new decimal separator under Decimal separator field. For this demo we are colon (:) as the decimal separator.
Step 5: Click OK to confirm and save the changes.
Thank you; this was useful when looking at my cell phone bill in more depth. Otherwise it just didn’t process the times correctly.
Thanks! Solved my excelproblem
Thanks! Very useful tip as I found the same option also in Excel 2007.
great!!!
tnx a LOT!
Thank you sooo much!!! I spent about 2 hours trying to solve this problem
Your suggestion has helped me tremendously. I bought laptop from Dubai. The number format was giving comma separator after every 2 digits. Now I have been able to change it to USA format. Many Thanks
It worked, but after closing the Excel and opening it again
Works fine, but if I sent the file to somebody else who has other settings, it changes again. How can I put a format in in such a way it is not changed based on the region of any user when shared?
Probably you can try with a macro. Check this out – http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21252436/how-to-change-decimal-separator-with-macro
Nice! Thanks.
Thank you so much. Ever since I got my new laptop some existing excel spreadsheets showed commas and point separators and the formulas did not work with a mix of both. This solved my problem.