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alexanderjlucas01's avatar
alexanderjlucas01
Copper Contributor
Aug 05, 2021

Excel Regional Settings - list seperater

I am running Office 365 on Windows 10 Professional. I live in South Africa and by default my regional settings have the LIST SEPARATOR as a , (comma) which suits me fine as I am used to using the comma to separate my arguments in a function e.g. =if(A1=1,"true","false"). If however I wish to use e.g. a ; (semi-colon) I go and make the changes in my regional setting and change the LIST SEPARATOR to a ; and the Excel enforces this change - this is how it should work as indicated in many an article. Now the problem comes with my son's system. He is running Office 365 (one of my licenses) on a Windows 10 Home Edition and he is also located in South Africa, and the regional settings reflect this i.e. the LIST SEPARATOR is a , (comma). Now he tries to write a similar formula in Excel and it insists that he has to use a ; (semi-colon) IRRESPECTIVE of the regional settings AND on top of this WINDOWS Home Edition won't allow him to change the LIST SEPARATOR. This is causing a lot of concern, as he is a student at school and one of the subjects he takes is Computers, and all the local literature makes use of the comma in their examples which leads to some confusion, not only for him but many of the other students as well. 

 

I have read extensively and exhaustively many articles - but to date have not found a solution. I have even gone into the registry (I have 35 years experience on systems) and looked at the relevant entry and tried to implement a change on the key i.e. change the , to a ; and the back again - but to no avail. 

 

If anyone has a working solution, please let me know as I can't see the rational for Microsoft changing the way regional settings are adhered to between the Professional and Home editions

Formulas and Functions

5 Replies

  • NikolinoDE's avatar
    NikolinoDE
    Gold Contributor
    Aug 05, 2021

    alexanderjlucas01 

    Compared to your described experience, I am a simple user.

    But if you allow, just one thought:

    If your language setting is correct, then maybe under Excel Options => Advanced => Edit Options "Adopt separators from operating system" could be deactivated and other separators entered.

    If everything is set correctly there, please see this link where several options are described as far as possible.

    Formula errors in Excel when list separator is not set correctly

     

    Hope I was able to help you with this information.

     

    Nikolino

    I know I don't know anything (Socrates)

     

    • alexanderjlucas01's avatar
      alexanderjlucas01
      Copper Contributor
      Aug 06, 2021

      NikolinoDE 

      Hi Nikolino

       

      Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. I had already tried your suggestion - but it failed to work on the Windows Home version my son has. What I did do, after I received your reply, was to try this on another laptop that has Windows Home on as well - still the problem persists. I checked the language settings on both my system (Professional) and my sons (Home) - both the same settings. It might have something to do with the Home version being Single Language??

       

      Hopefully will find a solution soon!

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