Hi Sarah,

You should be able to set a scale with more than 3 digits, don’t see why you are not able to.

But, regarding your specific problem of scale value ending with zero, I think this is a problem that relates to international language environments, i.e. different conventions to represent numbers in different local language settings.

Judging by your institution, you come from Germany. In German-English number formatting, the thousand separator is a dot as you have used. But in US and GB-English settings the thousands separator is a comma and a dot signifies a decimal point

When you say you type 1:10.000, do you mean to set a scale of "one to ten thousand"? If so, then you need to type in 1:10000 (without the dot). As I said earlier, in standard US and GB-English language settings, the dot signifies a decimal point. So if your ArcGIS language settings are are set to UK or US, 1:10.000 is understood by your computer as "one to ten point zero", which equals "one to ten" OR 1:10. Hence, the change in scale after you enter the value.

Hope this helps.

Sounds logical, thank you. But if I type 1:10000 without a separator, it jumps to 1:10 again. If I type 1:10001, it is fine. I tried typing a comma as a separator, I get the message "unknown number format". I am getting kind of desparate... :/

The earlier answer to your question seems to be very logical as compared to mine! But, still I would like to forward it though it judgemental. I'm not a technician of ArcGIS. This is from my practical experiences. Here is my answer: ArcGIS acts sometime something unusual which are not answerable by experts nor available in forums. For such issues you can uninstall and reinstall it by following default settings. But, my humble recommendation is that make sure there is a copy of set-up in your hand or in your system before doing so.

Regards.

Hi Sarah,

could you outline the steps you are using to set the scale, including which click through menu options you are using. Might give a clue to potential solutions.

When I open the properties of a data frame, go to "data frame" and choose the option "fixed scale", I cannot type a fixed scale (without dot or any other separator) that ends with zero. 1: 10000 would jump to 1:10 and likewise. If I choose a default scale, all those that end with zero (e.g. 1:24000) also jump to e.g. 1:24. If I choose 1:9999, all is fine, the same with 1:10001. The same happens when I want to change the automatic scale in the main menu window via the dropdown menu (if set to scale:automatic). When I want to insert a scale bar in my layout and want to fix the division values (properties of the scale bar -> when resizing adjust width -> division value), typing zeros is also not accepted. If I want to type 0.5 km, it jumps to 5 km. I would guess it is a separator problem,but I tried all possibilities with decimal and thousand separators. Right now I am considering Pankajs idea of reinstalling... :(

This ranks right up there with the strangest issues I have come across with ArcGIS. My guess is that this is a bug.

As a last resort, have you tried adding customised scale values to the default scale list? This may work. See the following link for instructions - http://help.arcgis.com/EN/arcgisdesktop/10.0/help/index.html#/Working_with_map_scales/006600000440000000/

Indeed it is! I tried that already but when typing a customized scale - same problem! I tried loading a list of default scales from another computer from file but the file couldnt be opened. So now I will reinstall and see if it helps. Thank you very much for your support!!!

 Hi Sarah, when you choose 1:9999, does it really show your map at 1:9999? or 1:9.999?    I would agree with Varun. Maybe you can startup  Arcgis Administrator, click the "advanced..." button and set the display language to be "English".

Change number regional settings at windows control panel.