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Following Google Docs "Editors Help" I just tried out the function EOMONTH.

Unfortunately, every example I found there will result in an "Parse Error". Example:

=EOMONTH(DATE(1969, 7, 20), 1)

The same happens with addressing specific cells like

=EOMONTH(A1, 1)

(A1 will contain a valid date)

What is wrong here?

UPDATE:

I'll provide an example-sheet here.

enter image description here enter image description here

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  • Check your formulas and be sure that you are not using invalid characters. The function you show us is the correct function for Google Sheets as well as all the major spreadsheet programs. The only why to create a parse error with that would be to have invalid characters in the functions (i.e. lowercase L instead of a 1 or lowercase O rather than a 0).
    – Bradley A. Tetreault
    Nov 24, 2015 at 17:28
  • 1
    Ah. I see German, so I guess you're in Europe. Try using semi-colons instead of commas.
    – ale
    Nov 24, 2015 at 19:38
  • Yep, I'm pretty sure that's it. If you look at the same help page in German it shows the formulas with semi-colons.
    – ale
    Nov 24, 2015 at 19:40

1 Answer 1

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5

In (much of) Europe, formulas need to use semi-colons instead of commas.

So, instead of 

=EOMONTH(DATE(1969, 7, 20), 1)

use

=EOMONTH(DATE(1969; 7; 20); 1)

(I presume that this is because comma is a decimal separator for Europeans, while Americans use a period.)

The Google Support page for the EOMONTH function in German shows semi-colons, while the same page in English shows commas. (French is inconsistent, but Spanish and Italian help pages also use semi-colons.)

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  • Thats it! Thank you very much. My system and browser is english layouted, but google treats me as a german ;)
    – itinance
    Nov 24, 2015 at 20:42
  • The same with me. I created a sheet with the iOS app set to US locale. Nonetheless Google obviously set the document locale to DE/something European while showing the US documentation. If this has to do with geolocation or a locale setting bound to the Google account is beyond my knowledge.
    – pong
    Nov 1, 2016 at 16:17

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