Regional Format Settings

Excel provides regional formatting settings for different languages and styles of presenting information.

Regional settings affects a number of things, like:

• Calendar date formatting
• Decimal numbers
• Default currency formatting
• Formula delimiters

Formula delimiters are the symbols used to separate arguments in a function.

The most common symbols are comma , and semicolon ;

For example, the English regional language setting uses commas:

While German regional language settings uses semicolons:

Example Regional Format Settings

Here are the date, decimal number, and formula delimiters shown with English (US) settings:

Here are the date, decimal number, and formula delimiters shown with German settings:

Notice that the English (US) formatting uses month/day/year and the German formatting uses day.month.year for calendar dates.

The English (US) formatting also uses a period (.) for the decimal symbol and the German formatting uses a comma (,).

Changing Regional Format Settings

Changing Regional Format Settings is accessed in the options part of the File menu:

Selecting this option will open a dialog box where you can choose your preferred regional language settings: