this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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Engineering Memes

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submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If I remember correctly Microsoft once responded saying that it can in fact not turn off that feature in Excel. Excel will always interpret your input and change it to what it thinks is correct

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

It's always been possible to format a range before inputting data. It won't be interpreted that way.

It only does that when it's formatet as "General" aka "Nobody knows what the fuck I'm about to do".

It would probably be more beneficial to change the default format to something else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

It only does that when it's formatet as "General" aka "Nobody knows what the fuck I'm about to do".

How about handling that as plain text?

Edit: wait, table calculation, what did i think? Well, i hadn't slebt much or good the last few days and 12 hours now, so there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Then select Format > Text

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Would be pretty annoying for numbers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Format as number then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Maybe numbers shouldn't be a special case, but should be the default for software meant to handle tables if numbers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

It would probably be more beneficial to change the default format to something else.

AfaIk this is not possible. Or MS doesn't allow it. User Defined would be pretty useless if MS would simply stop interpretating what I want to do in general

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children) 
function validate(val) 
   try:  
       cast val as numeric
   except:
      print "Oops, not a number"
      cast val as general  ## date or whatever 
end

validate(12.5)     ## returns 12.5
validate("12.5")   ## returns 12.5
validate("12 . 5") ## returns a date maybe
[–] PoolloverNathan 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Oh my god what cursed Python, Lua, and SQL offshoot is this

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

It's my own grammar, "Luanatic"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I mean, MS should change the default.

As a user, the only way currently is to make a template document and use that as a default when creating a new book.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

You most certainly can. You can set the format of a cell, and if its set to number 12.5 will be 12.5, it wont even try date formats...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

they're talking about defaults, as in when you create a new file the first thing you do is type a number and not get interpreted as a date.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Try opening a sheet sent by a Spaniard colleague. Good luck with decimals.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Thats a locale issues that excel has and cant fix ( for compatibility reasons ). Its one of the reasons i hate excel haha. But not related to cell types

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

No, I know. I can fix it, but old sheets and stubborn colleagues and clients and my fucking grandma won't.

My point was more related with excel manipulating input incorrectly because of Unspecified.