How to change commas to periods in Microsoft Excel data? step by step guide

surely you already know decimal numbers And you know what are separated from integers by a punctuation mark. What you may not know is that in some regions a period is used and in others the comma.

For example, throughout Europe, except the United Kingdom, the dot is usedwhile to separate the a thousand a comma. In the same way it happens in South Americabeing the United States, Mexico, Canada and some Caribbean islands the exception to the rule.

For this reason, if you must deliver a document to a region other than yours and does not use the same system, We recommend you pay attention to this post.

When is it necessary to change commas to periods in Microsoft Excel data tables?

As we mentioned before, not all countries use the same form of numbering. Moreover, in some African regions they do not have a defined standard. For this reason, if you must send an excel template or chart to a different location than yours, it is recommended that you first find out which sign to use.

The programs that belong to office package, take the writing mode of the system language and region. It is defined when we install Microsoft Windows. If your computer is in Spanishbut you want to use the write method english in Excelis a valid reason to change the comma to the period.

A common situation is thatwhen you download a spreadsheet from an external source such as the Internet, the same has been done in a different way which you are not used to.

For this and the previous cases, we will show you the following:

Steps to change commas to periods in your Microsoft Excel spreadsheets

There are two methods to perform the exchange between semicolons in the document of Excel. The first will affect only the program, while the second will affect the entire operating system.

Let’s see how to do each of them:

• Start Microsoft Excel.
• In the Homepagepress the button “Options”. It is located at the end of the side panel. You don’t need to create a blank workbook or open an existing one.
• In the pop-up window, locate and press “advanced”.
• In the section “Edit Options” you will find the box “Use system separators”this when activated will use the regional configuration of Windows (which we will change in the second method).
• Disable this option and exchange the point and the comma in the decimal and thousands separators as appropriate.
• To finish, press “To accept”.

a second way to do that, it’s change locale. This option is only recommended if you are going to use a decimal separation system other than permanently.

To do this, follow these steps:

• Click on Start and search “Control Panel”.
• Once this utility is open, select “Watch, language and region”.
• From the following two options, choose “Region”.
• Go to the tab “Administrative”.
• Your will appear here idiom Y region currently used by the system.
• To modify this, press “Change system locale”. You will need permissions from administrator.
• In this window, choose the new layout of language and region.
• Press “To accept” until leaving.

Note that this change will affect the entire operating system. For example, how to write some symbols on the keyboard will be affected, as well as the default language of certain programs.

For undo these changesperform the same steps and use the configuration that you used in the beginning.