Excel formulas may use a comma or semi-colon as a delimiter. This depends on your system settings. Here’s what you need to know:
- Your Excel settings are based on your computer's regional settings.
- In some countries, like USA, Canada, Great Britain, Excel uses a comma as the formula delimiter.
- In other countries, like France and Spain, a semi-colon is used instead of a comma.
How and Where to Change This Option
Don’t waste time searching for this setting in Excel! It’s not there but in Windows settings in the Language and Region settings😮
Finding the list separator in Windows 11 is harder than in older Windows versions. Previously, this dialog box was easy to find in Windows settings. But in Windows 11, Microsoft made it less accessible.
- Opening Language and Region settings still shows many options
- But the list separator is not visible 😟
- You’ll need to dig into advanced settings to access it 😮
But, you can easily open the dialog box by calling the program from the Windows searching box 😉👍
- Go to the Windows searching bar
- Write the command line
intl.cpl - Open the app.
Change the list Separator
- The dialog box opens on your country settings
- Click on Additional settings ...
- Go to the Numbers tab
- Change the List Separator symbol.
Warning: Changing Windows local settings affects more than just Excel. It impacts your entire system. Here’s how it can affect your data:
- It changes the date format for all programs, not just Excel.
- It alters the way thousand separators are displayed in numbers.
- It affects decimal separators, which may change from a comma to a dot or vice versa.
Make sure to double-check your data after making these changes. Your formulas and numbers may look different!
