Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

It could be very helpful to be able to set the default formats independently of the locale and language settings, application-wide.

Take one example.
User based in Switzerland, works for a company where standards are;

language: english
date format: yyyy-mm-dd
time: HH:mm
decimal separator: 10.00
thousands separator: 10'000.00
negative numbers red.

I cannot stop dreaming what a relief it would be to do this.

I'm pretty sure there has been an open request for this for a long time.

[Tutorial] Reporting bugs or suggestions

I have seen several date - and other - format problems reported.

I find that I have problems with the formats all the time, and I'm honestly not quite sure what's going on.
Calc does not seem to pick up the specific date, time, number system settings, but appears to revert to the locale or regional settings, even when they were overridden in Windows.

Hence my suggestion to be able to reset OO default formats independently, application wide.
Not very glamorous, but I feel certain it would be useful and make life easier for many.

My understanding is that OO only gets one setting from the system: the locale. From that, OO loads it's own built-in settings for all the details. The built-in settings cannot be changed or overridden.

"My understanding is that OO only gets one setting from the system: the locale. From that, OO loads it's own built-in settings for all the details. The built-in settings cannot be changed or overridden."

Aye, that's indeed the problem.
Hence my suggestion, proposal, request, wish, prayer... whatever...

If, as you say, this has been an open request for a long time, I guess I don't need to hold my breath.

Hear hear! Can you please help users understand the rationale for not changing built in formats? Is it resources, time, technical or what?

The LibreOffice has an extra function. You can set the Date patterns:
And you can operate your own templates. You can adjust the properties of the default styles in a custom template file.