Number Formats and Locale Settings

[jade30]

You mean the system locale, the second option in the language settings? Well, this is what I thought until I had a long discussion with one of our russian members.
Now my understanding is that all formatting is up to you. First, the value has to be a number at all. Number formatting on text is pointless. What is considered as number depends on the cell's individual number format locale (NFL). If input is a number (1.23, 31/12/2000, 23E-4, 13%, true) it will be formatted according to your formatting. If you did not apply any then your input gets formatted automatically according to the cell's number NFL.
You set the default NFL for newly created documents through the third setting in the options-panel. Of course this will not affect your custom templates.
If one cell has number format "General" with NFL en-GB 31/12/2000 is a number 12/31/2000 is text. The next cell with US-NFL handles this the other way round. "DD/MM/YY" explicitly set in a US-cell is a custom number format (in a british cell it's default date). "DD/MM/YY" with US NFL treats input 31/12/07 as number and shows 12/31/07, whereas input 12/31/07 is not a number at all. So don't do this except for proof of concept.

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