In 2020, scientists decided to simply rework the alphanumeric symbols they used to represent genes rather than try to deal with an Excel function that interpreted their names as dates and (un)helpfully reformatted them automatically. Yesterday a Excel team member published that the company is rolling out an update to Windows and macOS to fix this issue.
Excel’s automatic conversions are intended to make it easier and faster to enter certain types of commonly entered data (numbers and dates, for example). But for scientists who use quick shorthand to make things readable, this could ruin published, peer-reviewed data, as a result. 2016 study found.
Microsoft detailed the update in a blog post this week, adding a checkbox called “Convert continuous letters and numbers to a date.” You can probably guess what it alternates. The update builds on the Automatic Data Conversions setting the company added last year, which included the option for Excel to warn you when it’s about to become more useful and allow you to upload your file without automatic conversion so you can make sure that nothing gets damaged. he.
Microsoft’s blog adds caveats, such as that Excel prevents conversion by saving data as text, meaning the data may not be useful for subsequent calculations. There is also a known issue where conversions cannot be disabled when running macros.
