I have been going round and round for several months trying to find an
answer...
and am trying the Excel Newsgroup because I cannot get a correct answer in
the Word Forum (maybe no-one knows):

I am a forms developer for my company. I use Word tables which have the
ability to do excel-like calculations. The calculations in this shipping
document are very simple and the formulas are almost identical to those
written in excel.

The template will be used in France, and used in the French ver of Word2003.
While working the calculations (using the English version of Word2003), I
have turned my computers Regional Settings to French.

The calculation is simple, cell A1*A2=A3 and I have written it in cell A3 as:
{=A1*A2 \# "#°##0,00 E;(#°##0,00 E);"}
the part of the formula in parenthesis with the semicolon keep the 'total'
cell blank until numbers are typed into cells A1 and A2, otherwise the total
cell displays 0. The 'degree' sign in the formula is a 'non-breaking space',
which someone from the Word forum recommended I add.

Cells A1 and A2 and A3 are formatted as: #°##0,00 E;(#°##0,00 E)

When I enter the number "1" into Cell A1 and "137 459,00" into cell A2 my
total does not show 137 459,00 E but "696"...it is adding the 137 and 459!

creating the same formula in English works just fine! There's something I
just don't get, either the cell formatting or the formula.

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.....