{"id":47662,"date":"2023-10-21T20:16:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-21T20:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/21\/microsoft-fixes-the-excel-feature-that-was-wrecking-scientific-data\/"},"modified":"2023-10-21T20:16:55","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T20:16:55","slug":"microsoft-fixes-the-excel-feature-that-was-wrecking-scientific-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/21\/microsoft-fixes-the-excel-feature-that-was-wrecking-scientific-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">In 2020, scientists decided just to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/8\/6\/21355674\/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rework the alphanumeric symbols<\/a> they used to represent genes rather than try to deal with an Excel feature that was interpreting their names as dates and (un)helpfully reformatting them automatically. Yesterday, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@kc_lemson\/post\/CypDONQx7Ce\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">member of the Excel team posted<\/a> that the company is rolling out an update on Windows and macOS to fix that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Excel\u2019s automatic conversions are intended to make it easier and faster to input certain types of commonly entered data \u2014 numbers and dates, for instance. But for scientists using quick shorthand to make things legible, it could ruin published, peer-reviewed data, as a <a href=\"https:\/\/genomebiology.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s13059-016-1044-7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2016 study found<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><a href=\"https:\/\/insider.microsoft365.com\/en-us\/blog\/control-data-conversions-in-excel-for-windows-and-mac\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft detailed the update<\/a> in a blog post this week, adding a checkbox labeled \u201cConvert continuous letters and numbers to a date.\u201d You can probably guess what that toggles. The update builds on the Automatic Data Conversions settings the company added last year, which included the option for Excel to warn you when it\u2019s about to get extra helpful and let you load your file without automatic conversion so you can ensure nothing will be screwed up by it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"my-9\">\n<p><figcaption class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup inline text-gray-13 dark:text-gray-e9 [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-black [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-gray-e9 dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray-13 dark:[&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray-63\"><em>The updated Excel settings.<\/em><\/figcaption><cite class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup inline not-italic text-gray-63 dark:text-gray-bd [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-gray-63 [&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:text-gray-bd dark:[&amp;&gt;a:hover]:shadow-underline-gray [&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 dark:[&amp;&gt;a]:text-gray-bd dark:[&amp;&gt;a]:shadow-underline-gray\">Image: Microsoft<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Microsoft\u2019s blog adds caveats, such as that Excel avoids the conversion by saving the data as text, which means the data may not work for calculations later. There\u2019s also a known issue where you can\u2019t disable the conversions when running macros. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2023\/10\/21\/23926585\/microsoft-excel-misreading-dates-human-genes-conversion-fixed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2020, scientists decided just to rework the alphanumeric symbols they used to represent genes rather than try to deal with an Excel feature that was interpreting their names as dates and (un)helpfully reformatting them automatically. Yesterday, a member of the Excel team posted that the company is rolling out an update on Windows and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}