Bug? Any number entered becomes a date

rylan76 · General User Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 10

Hi

I have had enormous trouble simply entering a decimal number into a cell. I am running OO on Fedora Core 3.

Entering 154.12 in -any- cell on a worksheet results in

54/12/01

being input in the cell when I just want a simple 154.12 value to be recorded.

I have tried right-clicking on that cell, selecting "Format Cells" and selecting "Number". This converts the value to -637378 (?) but, once again, typing 154.12 in the cell (which is now -supposed- to be a number cell, NOT a date, right?) gives the totally wrong 54/12/01. Going back to Format Cells now reveals that, once again, the cell is a date, not a number. Bug?

How can I -STOP- OO calc from doing any automatic conversions in any cell? Yes, I know about the use of the format cells function (See above) and I see that there are many date formats defined with fullstops in the template - how can I DELETE or deactivate these templates so OO calc stops treating a decimal point (.) as a DATE indicator?
The delete button is greyed out - I want NO auto-formatting done according to cell contents at ALL.

How can I do this?

Thanks!

atd · General User Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 30

Maybe you must write 154,12.

rylan76 · General User Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 10

Hmm, this seems to work, but calculations are still totally screwed up - trying to calculate on a field containing a "comma'ed" number, results in totally wrong answers.

For example, specifing =0.4*(A1) where A1 contains this "comma'ed" decimal number (lets say A1 contains 80,5) results in 2947668,5 as an answer...

maxqnz · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:01 am Post subject:

dfrench · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:39 am Post subject:

Try following some of the other threads on this subject like http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=5590

To set the locale appropriately goto Tools Options Languages ... male sure that your decimal separator is set to "."

The date format settings have NO effect whatever on how the input to cell is recognized only on how it is output

rylan76 · General User Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 10

Hi David

Thanks for replying - I checked out the thread you suggested and I have tried almost exactly what you suggested to that poster. My problem is that Calc dos -not- respond to any non-date format selection for a cell, neither can I specify . as a decimal seperator. It seems that all selections I make to try and set a formatting in a cell (or on a whole sheet) are ignored by Calc.

I have guessed that to stop Calc treating a number like 152.42 as the year 2152 2nd April, I need to remove the

D. MMM. YYYY

format code in the "Format Cells" dialog, or change the . to , which I have tried to do several times - Calc seems to accept the change, but the next time I open the dialog the format is exactly back as it would be if I made no change. I cannot remove that format line either, since it it apparently built-in and the X (to delete a format line) is greyed out.

That's the whole nub of my problem - no matter what I do I can't get calc to stop treating every single number I input -anywhere- as a date... Even inputting numbers with , as a decimal seperator does not work since cell arithmetic is then screwed up, and doing something like =(0.4) *(A25) where A25 contains, say 10,2 results in a totally impossbile six-digit gibberish answer.

Any idea what gives?

Thanks!

Dale · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:10 pm Post subject:

Have you checked your Locale setting? This will determine how OOo expectes dates to be entered.

rylan76 · General User Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 10

Hi Dale

I checked - it is set to "Default" (whatever that is). I've tried several languages (UK and US English, plus South African English) but the problem still remains exactly the same - any number input in any cell becomes a date, and it is impossible to set any cell to anything BUT a date...

Any ideas at all...?

Thanks a lot!

Dale · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:53 pm Post subject:

rylan76 · General User Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 10

Hi Dale

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll give it a try - I am starting to suspect one of two things: either I am making a very basic mistake or there is something very wrong with the OO version / instance (or OO in general) I have on my system. Either way, I've got to go back to Excell (yuck...) and Windows (double yuck) to do what I need, since I have a deadline on the work to keep to. And I can't spend 2 hours just trying to get a simple decimal number like 152.52 into just one cell... my Boss would kill me if he found out.

Darn! And I thought I could leave Excell alone for good. Guess OO isn't quite there yet.

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply anyway!

Kind regards,