Microsoft now allows users to disable automatic date conversion, which means scientists no longer have to worry about using alternative names for genes.

Microsoft Fixes Excel Feature That Forced Scientists to Rename Human Genes::Microsoft now allows users to disable automatic date conversion, which means scientists no longer have to worry about using alternative names for genes.

  • P03 LockeEnglish
    25•1 year ago

    I thought setting a column to string only was already possible.

    • @[email protected]English
      18•1 year ago

      You could already, after the fact, and per cell.

      If you’re importing 100,000 rows in, the damage to your data is already done by the time you’re at the step where you can set the field to not convert.

    • MHLoppy
      4•1 year ago

      It is, I’ve used that to prevent automatic removal of leading zeroes when reading the values of bytes.

      Based on the article it seems like it’s just a matter of not having to spend the time (and mental overhead) of doing that for all required columns and never slipping up on it (now just set and forget).

    • @Mr_Dr_OinkEnglish
      0•1 year ago

      So did i. Format cell(s) > data type (or something) then just seleect text, or custom or whatever.