In 2020, scientists determined simply to remodel the alphanumeric symbols they used to characterize genes fairly than attempt to cope with an Excel function that was decoding their names as dates and (un)helpfully reformatting them robotically. Yesterday, a member of the Excel group posted that the corporate is rolling out an replace on Home windows and macOS to repair that.
Excel’s automated conversions are meant to make it simpler and sooner to enter sure forms of generally entered information — numbers and dates, as an illustration. However for scientists utilizing fast shorthand to make issues legible, it might wreck revealed, peer-reviewed information, as a 2016 research discovered.
Microsoft detailed the replace in a weblog put up this week, including a checkbox labeled “Convert steady letters and numbers to a date.” You possibly can in all probability guess what that toggles. The replace builds on the Computerized Knowledge Conversions settings the corporate added final yr, which included the choice for Excel to warn you when it’s about to get additional useful and allow you to load your file with out automated conversion so you may guarantee nothing will likely be screwed up by it.
Microsoft’s weblog provides caveats, corresponding to that Excel avoids the conversion by saving the info as textual content, which implies the info might not work for calculations later. There’s additionally a identified situation the place you may’t disable the conversions when operating macros.
