Technology

57473 readers

3652 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

398

Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data (www.theverge.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

90 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It shouldn't make assumptions about your data by default, and changing values that look like they're in a specific format should be opt-in, not default behavior

But that's exactly what made the "auto" data type of Excel such a powerful tool when introduced. If you're storing text, make the datatype "text", problem solved.

Nowadays, when making stuff like Excel from scratch, you could opt for a "these look like dates, change the type from 'none' to 'date'?" but with middle management being conditioned on the data type being 'auto', that's something that's hard to change.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

Optimist: The glass is half full.

Pessimist: The glass is half empty.

Realist: The glass is twice as big as necessary.

Excel: The glass is the 2nd of January.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Honestly, I'd say you shouldn't do that prompt method. The auto type is genuinely great for the use cases which Excel is supposed to be used for, from someone managing their household finances to charting the growth of a business.

By all means, it absolutely should make assumptions about your data by default, as that's incredibly convenient for the average user. You can always change the type of a cell afterwards if what you're doing is special.