Not able to correctly declare functions' arguments

Hi guys,

New user here, hope this is the right place to post my request.

For reference, I'm running Excel 2016 on a Windows 10 machine.

It seems that Excel itself isn't recognizing any kind of punctuation as a valid separator between function arguments. I have this problem for any kind of function, even the simplest built-in ones.
I couldn't find any reference about this anywhere on the internet, which is quite weird.

To explain this better, here are a couple screenshots.

As you can see, even with a simple function such as "SUM" (Somma in italian), I am unable to set the second number as a different argument of the function, resulting in an error message asking if I want to change that to a ":".


I also have this other issue: for no reason, at least once or twice a day, Excel would freeze and the UI becomes unusable as you can see in the last attachment. I haven't found anyone else reporting the same issue (at least according to Google search). Has anybody had the same problem?


Thanks in advance for your help.

I believe that this is controlled in Windows Control Panel->Language and Regional settings -> List separator. Usually this is set to either , or ; Someone may have changed it to some other character. Assuming you are using Windows, check this setting and see what character is set as your systems list separator.

Originally Posted by MrShorty

I believe that this is controlled in Windows Control Panel->Language and Regional settings -> List separator. Usually this is set to either , or ; Someone may have changed it to some other character. Assuming you are using Windows, check this setting and see what character is set as your systems list separator.

I checked both the system and Excel separator. System wise I have comma as a separator of decimal numbers, while in excel I'm using the dot. None of these seem to work.
I need to keep the two settings different because of some .txt files that I need to read with Excel that use the dot as a separator.

Originally Posted by xlnitwit

Hi,

Looking at the prompts you are getting it appears you use the space as a separator so it would be:
=SOMMA(33 99)

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Using space as a separator prompts the very same error.

The arguments are displayed without any space inbtween them, same thing if I use an Excel file created on another PC with multi-argument formulas.

Another weird thing is that, as you can see from the second screenshot, when I click on the second argument in the pop-up description in order to highlight it, the highlighted portion appears offset (as you can see, it highlights the parentheses and some blank space, instead of the "5").

System wise I have comma as a separator of decimal numbers, while in excel I'm using the dot.

Decimal separator is a different setting from list separator (though it is usually in the same dialog. What is listed as your "list" separator?