Excel ignoring change to Windows default currency

[Rubey]

I’m having a terrible time getting Excel to recognize changes to the currency symbol made in Windows Regional & Language Options. I’m running Office 2007 on WinXP. Here are the steps I go through:

1. Under Regional Options, select English (United States)
2. Create test file with a few numbers formatted as Currency, a few others as Accounting, both using the default “$” symbol.
3. Save and close test file. Close Excel.
4. Go back into the Control Panel and change Regional Options to English (South Africa). Click Apply and then OK. Reboot PC.
5. Re-open test file.

At this point I expected (wrongly?) to see the numbers in my test file appear formatted using the South African “R” currency symbol. No such luck. They still have the “$” symbol. When I go into Format Cells and look at the Number tab the Category has been changed from Currency (or Accounting as the case may be) to a Custom number format.

I’ve re-tried this using different locales, and get the same problem. So I’m wondering, first off, am I right to expect Excel to apply the new Windows currency setting to existing Currency or Accounting formatted cells in a previously created file?

Secondly, if that is how its supposed to work (i.e. its not working right on my machine) then has anyone else seen this problem before?
Many thanks in advance to anyone who might be able to help!

[oldchippy]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum, why can't you just format the cells to R South African if thats what you want?

[Rubey]

Hi oldchippy,

My client has users in multiple countries. I have a large spreadsheet model I have developed for them, with many input and output cells in currency formats. They want to distribute the file to users in the US, EU, South Africa, etc. and have things appear in whatever currency is set in each user's Windows regional settings.

Note that they do not require applying exchange rates based on user regional settings. Just changing the currency format.

[martindwilson]

what purpose would a figure be if say £100 is just changed to $100?

[Rubey]

I can see your confusion, so will try to describe the workbook a bit. It is a financial model. So you have a lot of blank input cells, that could be any currency. And a lot of formulas with the results also displayed in the same currency. There is little-to-no data (e.g. value = 100) hardcoded into the file that will be distributed. But lots of formulas and lots of (blank) input cells and lots of output cells. It would be a real pain for each user to re-format all the input and output cells to their own currency. Hence the desire to use their Windows regional setting for currency symbol.