Excel for Mac 2008 and Yosemite

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So, I just installed Yosemite on my Mac (27-inch, Late 2009, 2,8 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3), and now when I run Excel for Mac 2008, which I've had installed from the beginning on this machine, I have a particular problem.

When I type a decimal into a cell (such as 0.02 or .1) Excel refuses to recognize it as a numerical value and instead treats it as text, not allowing me to perform any mathematical calculations.

This is a new problem that seems to be linked, chronologically at least, to my installing Yosemite as an operating system. My friends at Microsoft no longer support this version of Excel (why? who knows?) so no help there, but I'm wondering if this behavior has been observed by others and if so if there is any solution that works to correct it?

After continuing to check, I found a potential clue, but still don't know how to correct it. When I purchased my Mac and originally installed Excel, I was located in the U.S.A. Now I live in France, so when I specified location upon installing Yosemite I indicated France. I've found that Excel (though I didn't make any change in it) now expects decimals to be entered as 0,02 (in the French manner) rather than 0.02 (in the American manner). So -- is there a toggle in Yosemite for the default way in which decimals are entered/displayed? Or is the only solution to change my location back to the U.S.A.?

Thanks!
 
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chscag

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So -- is there a toggle in Yosemite for the default way in which decimals are entered/displayed? Or is the only solution to change my location back to the U.S.A.?

You got it. Open System Preferences, Language & Region, and change your region back to the US or start learning how to work Excel in French. ;)
 
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Thanks

I just was wondering if there was a more elegant way to do it, but apparently not.

I appreciate your prompt response.
 
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MacInWin

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What's so inelegant about that solution? You want your machine, in Excel, to act like it was in the US, not France, so you set the machine to be US, not France. Or you set your brain to work like France and set the machine to the same. Either way works.
 

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