Excel online date format keeps reverting to US locale.

Question

Hello,

I have what seems to be an identical issue to Holusojay, listed last August. Link here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-online-regional-format-keep-reverting-to-us/11eb6c83-143f-467a-b989-86ff49d06dda

My excel spreadsheets keep reverting from UK to US regional format whenever I log back into Microsoft 365 through my workplace Portal (using Citrix, if useful). This impacts such things as time and date format (inverting date/month orientation etc.), and any formulae requiring dates as a reference as the months and days are inverted. Sometimes it won't even recognise the formula as a date at all.

I followed the guidance given to the original question poster, amending my location settings to UK, but it resets back to US the next time I log back into my work portal and use Office 365. It doesn't seem to affect desktop excel, but I prefer to use the online version.

Any advice is welcome.

Josh

Answer 1

Hi Josh,

Greetings! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community.

Regional format settings in Excel affect dates, currency, formula delimiters and more. If you are using your organization account, the default regional format settings in Excel for the web are the site regional settings of the SharePoint site where the Excel workbook is hosted.

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1. Click Home > Number Format > More number formats...
2. Under Category, click Date, Time, or Special, and then select a locale from the Locale menu.
3. Select the checkbox to set the chosen locale as your default regional format, and then click OK.

Reference:Change regional format settings in Excel for the web - Microsoft Support

Best Regards,

Snow Lu

Answer 2

Hi Snow Lu,

Thank you for your quick reply, perhaps you can help me further. I'm not sure that the excel spreadsheet is hosted on Sharepoint, it is on my OneDrive. Nevertheless I cannot figure out how to follow the steps you have listed:

1. Click Home > Number Format > More number formats...
2. Under Category, click Date, Time, or Special, and then select a locale from the Locale menu.
3. Select the checkbox to set the chosen locale as your default regional format, and then click OK

How do I find/follow these steps, from which menu? I tried to follow these in Sharepoint but there is no obvious pathway.

Changing my regional format settings in Excel for the web only changes the settings for that one session - every time I log back in I have to do it again, or workaround. It's quite frustrating.

Thanks again for the help,

Josh

Answer 3

Home > Number Format > More number formats.

Date, Time, or Special >Locale

You can change region from:

View> My account>setting>Language and region>Select a region format.

Answer 4

Hi Snow Lu, Thanks for the clarification, I didn't realise you'd meant in the Excel app.

Unfortunately these steps only work temporarily and each new session I have to follow these steps again. Is there a reason why this might be the case?

Many thanks,

Josh

Answer 5

Have you changed your account region?
View> My account>setting>Language and region>Select a region format.