---
title: "Excel Export Issue with European Number Format"
description: "Why numbers may appear incorrectly in Excel exports and how to work around the formatting limitation"
url: https://help.wpdatatables.com/en/articles/55-excel-export-issue-with-european-number-format
collection: "Technical issues"
updated: 2026-09-03
language: en
---

# Excel Export Issue with European Number Format

Why numbers may appear incorrectly in Excel exports and how to work around the formatting limitation

If you're using the **European number format** in your tables (i.e., **dot** as the thousands separator and **comma** as the decimal separator), and notice that **numeric values appear incorrectly when exporting to Excel**, this is a known limitation.

![](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/email_outbound_attachments/20250729114621_6415.png)

This issue affects only the **Excel export** option via our **Table Tools feature** and occurs **specifically with European-formatted numbers**.

After further investigation, we confirmed that the **third-party library** responsible for Excel export **does not fully support European-style formatting**. It only correctly handles the **US number format** (comma for thousands, dot for decimals).

We’ve also explained this limitation in our documentation:  
👉 [Table Tools Export Guide](https://wpdatatables.com/documentation/table-features/table-tools/)

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### ✅ Suggested Workarounds:

-   **Use CSV export instead** — CSV files preserve number formatting more reliably across different locales.
    
-   **Change affected columns to string format** — This prevents Excel from misinterpreting numeric values during export.
    
-   **Switch to US number format** — If compatible with your use case, updating the number format in table settings will resolve the issue for Excel exports.