How to Change the Decimal Separator in Excel 2013

You might want to learn how to change the decimal separator in Excel 2013 if you are finding that your workplace or school requires you to use something else to identify a decimal, such as a comma.

This is a situation that can occasionally come up when you are formatting a spreadsheet that will be read and viewed by others, so it is useful to know where to go to make this change.

Our guide will teach you how to change the default decimal point to another symbol of your choosing, which will modify the way that your data is presented within the cells of your Excel worksheet.

There are some other options for changing cell formatting, too. Our convert text to number Excel tutorial will show you how to switch between text and number formatting.

Use a Different Decimal Separator in Excel 2013

The steps below are going to change all of your decimal separators in Excel 2013. This is not specific to only the currency or accounting formatted cells.

Any cell containing a decimal separator, regardless of its formatting, will be replaced with whatever you choose to use instead of a decimal point.

Note that entering a number with a decimal point after making this change (ex – 12.34) can result in difficulty executing formulas.

You will need to enter that number with the symbol that you used to replace the decimal point (ex – if I chose a comma instead, I would need to enter the number as 12,34).

Have you tried to add symbols to your Word documents? Our guide on how to insert a check mark in Word can show you how.

Step 1: Open Excel 2013.

Step 2: Click the File tab at the top-left corner of the window.

click the file tab

Step 3: Click Options at the bottom of the column on the left side of the window.

click options in the column at the left of the window

Step 4: Click the Advanced option in the left column of the Excel Options window.

how to change the decimal separator in excel 2013

Step 5: Click the box to the left of Use system separators to clear the check mark, then replace the “.” in the Decimal separator field with whatever symbol you would like to use instead.

enter a new value for the decimal separator

Click the OK button at the bottom of the window to save and apply your changes.

Now that you know how to change the decimal separator in Excel 2013, you can adjust this setting to make your spreadsheet data display the way that you want it to.

If this change has any adverse effect on the appearance of your spreadsheet, you can always return to this location and change the settings back to their default.

Do you need to use pipes instead of commas to delimit your CSV files? This article will show you how to make that change on a Windows 7 computer.

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