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Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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How about just not auto-convert everything and keep the integrity of the data unless specifically asked to? Is that so hard?
Microsoft assumes their users are complete idiots, even when they (the users) are actively trying to convince them (Microsoft) otherwise. No matter how advanced the feature may be, they'll assume you found instructions somewhere to do something entirely unrelated and they constantly have to save you from yourself. As a result you constantly have to fight the OS for access and control to get it to do what you want.
If you're even a bit of a power user that is, of course.
But more often than not Microsoft's assumption is probably spot on.
That assumption is perfectly good for a default. Not a mandatory feature that power users have to live with.
As a default, sure. Should be one that's easily changed, though. Repeatedly fighting the machine that's supposed to do your bidding and make your life easier gets old rather quickly. A machine you own and administrate, let's not forget that.
Excel is inherently flawed in its design.
The thing is, that excel already has half the means of what would be necessary to really fix this bug. That is a field for each cell where the original text can stay.
An excel sheet is just a bunch of XML files zipped in a specific structure. You can unpack a file and look for yourself.
Each worksheet is it's own file and each cell is subdivided into the value and the formula, that generated this value (or nothing, if there is no formula).
Excel could easily fix this issue by adding another possible cell attribute like "original" or "plain" that, when set, allows you to roll back any conversion.
But no, they go a half assed way as always and screw up even more.
In order to do that I think they would first have to ratify a standards change to the Excel format, which is open.
Uh, I mean kinda...
Excel implements two Microsoft file format standards:
Those are not the same and even incompatible in parts. It is correct, that Microsoft tries to use ISO 29500 more, but most files (2007) still are ECMA-376.
But yes, they kinda would have to change their shitty, ISO-incompatible ISO "standard" to fix this issue this way.
Or use the formula field, idk. ๐
Excel is never ever going to break backwards compatability. In fact, quite some "features" in Excel are just there to stay bug-for-bug compatible with existing systems.
Example: Excel stores dates internally as a float - called the serial date, you can view it by running DATEVALUE on any cell that contains a date. It is supposed to be the number of days since 1 January 1900. However, since early Excel versions had to be compatible with Lotus1-2-3, Excel had to be compatible with a bug in Lotus123: they had erroneously assumed 1900 to be a leap year. In addition, the indexing is off by one. So the actual 0 epoch of an Excel serial date is 30 December 1899 for all dates starting 1 March 1900.