When I tried it on my system, however, it worked exactly as expected. After some back and forth emails with Christian, we figured out a solution: using the International System Preferences panel, set the number format to US instead of German. As soon as Christian made this change, Numbers worked as expected. We're not certain if this issue affects more than just Germany, but if you're having trouble with absolute ranges in Numbers, it might be worth checking your number format.
I hope this will be addressed in an upcoming update from Apple.

