Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

quadratichq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 144 posts

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#21

Post by less_less »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #8
psychoslave wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only HN readership might take an iso order as normal I guess :D

ISO order is the correct order. 2025 April 7 or 2025-04-07 or whatever. Human-read numbers are big endian and dates should be big endian to maintain that consistency. Also, America uses ISO order, we just use a comma. 2025 April 7 is the same as April 7, 2025. Just like Bill Gates is the same as Gates, Bill.

> Human-read numbers are big endian and dates should be big endian to maintain that consistency.

... in English, anyway. A lot of languages are little-endian both for dates and for at least 2-digit numbers, if not larger numbers.

(Just in case your post isn't a joke.)

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#22

Post by madcaptenor »

pasc1878 wrote: post #10

I would be careful on dates not just before 1582 but before 1753. Great Britain and its colonies (which included USA) did not change to Gregorian until 1752 and also to confuse more changed the date on when the year changed from March to 1st January. If you are in Greece or Russia be even more aware as that will be around 1920 when they changed.

Fortunately, Excel doesn't support dates before 1900.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#23

Post by deepsun »

matsemann wrote: post #17
nabilhat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is supported in Excel. Select options > Data > Automatic Data Conversions > untick the boxes.

How does it then work if I send the file to others. Is it saved in the file or will it just crash there?

The others may have their own preferences to edit documents.

It's like you edited one code file in a project, and you want everyone to switch to night IDE theme when they open that particular file.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#24

Post by netsharc »

graypegg wrote: post #18
netsharc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any SaaS app in Canada that exports xlsx files Why would you need to localize it there? I'm sure it's the Excel the user has is the one doing the localization, so I can email my French colleague an Excel file and the formula in B5 which is =SUM() on my machine will be =SOMME() on hers. There's even sites for the dictionary of the function names, but googling "Excel french dictionary" gives you the top result that "…

(For good reason) Language is a picky thing in Canada, it's very important (when selling to the federal government or Québec) that both English and French localizations have equal footing. To open a en-US XLSX file in a fr-CA copy of Excel, you will need the en-US language pack. If you make this a requirement for a Québec government entity... you will not get that contract.

> To open a en-US XLSX file in a fr-CA copy of Excel, you will need the en-US language pack

Are you sure? That sounds insane. Maybe if you're exporting a CSV where you insert the formulas as text, and expect the Excel to do some magic conversion..

I'm pretty sure that XLSX file is "universally" openable, and the user using the fr-CA copy of Excel will see =SOMME( ... ), doesn't matter what locale the source Excel is.

ChatGPT says:

> The Office Open XML specification, standardized as ECMA-376 and ISO/IEC 29500, defines how formulas are stored in XLSX files. It specifies that:

> Function names and formula grammar are stored in a locale-independent (invariant) format in the file — specifically, English-language function names.

> You can find this in: ECMA-376, Part 1: Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference, Section 18.17 “Formulas”

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#25

Post by dugmartin »

The one that always bites me is Excel truncating the leading zero in US zip codes (they start with 0 in the Northeast US). I’m wondering if that would have happened if Microsoft was located in Boston instead of Seattle.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#26

Post by pasc1878 »

madcaptenor wrote: post #22
pasc1878 wrote: post #10

I would be careful on dates not just before 1582 but before 1753. Great Britain and its colonies (which included USA) did not change to Gregorian until 1752 and also to confuse more changed the date on when the year changed from March to 1st January. If you are in Greece or Russia be even more aware as that will be around 1920 when they changed.

Fortunately, Excel doesn't support dates before 1900.

The article is not talking about Excel at that point.

But the program thw author is promoting says it does support dates before 1900.

I would worry what it does for dates between 1582 and 1753 in Anglo countries.

Basically you need to quote the date system as well as the date to get it correct. Even today there are countries not using Gregorian calendar.

I record dates as Julian days (or modified to not need a 32bit number) which is what Excel stores just using a different base date.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#27

Post by sim7c00 »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #8
psychoslave wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only HN readership might take an iso order as normal I guess :D

ISO order is the correct order. 2025 April 7 or 2025-04-07 or whatever. Human-read numbers are big endian and dates should be big endian to maintain that consistency. Also, America uses ISO order, we just use a comma. 2025 April 7 is the same as April 7, 2025. Just like Bill Gates is the same as Gates, Bill.

in my country you read and speak numbers 97 like 'seven and ninety'. this is normal.. :p

aslong as we dont base our endianess on how french pronounce or read nrs i think we can work with it.

that being said, i am for ISO notation if you want to order something in a list. year, month, day seems logical in this case as it will easily sort chronologically. i dont see another real reason why one would be better than another.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#28

Post by FeteCommuniste »

ryandrake wrote: post #19
thesuitonym wrote: post #16

It really bugs me when computers try to figure out what you mean. What I mean is what I typed, and if I typed it incorrectly, I would delete it and type it again.

It's probably the most pervasive and irritating recent (last two decades) trend in all of computing. "Did you mean?" NO IF I MEANT THAT I WOULD HAVE TYPED IT. "It looks like you are..." NO. "Are you sure?" YES. Computers need to stop second guessing users.

I don't mind hints as much but what really sours me on a program is when it simply makes automatic edits to what I typed.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#29

Post by WillAdams »

madcaptenor wrote: post #22
pasc1878 wrote: post #10

I would be careful on dates not just before 1582 but before 1753. Great Britain and its colonies (which included USA) did not change to Gregorian until 1752 and also to confuse more changed the date on when the year changed from March to 1st January. If you are in Greece or Russia be even more aware as that will be around 1920 when they changed.

Fortunately, Excel doesn't support dates before 1900.

For all the details on that see:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev...

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#30

Post by DiggyJohnson »

SamBam wrote: post #20
thesuitonym wrote: post #16

It really bugs me when computers try to figure out what you mean. What I mean is what I typed, and if I typed it incorrectly, I would delete it and type it again.

What do you mean when you type in '"1/2" + 1'? Unless you just want to keep that text as plain text, it's going to be doing some interpreting.

Devil’s devil’s advocate here for better interpretations:

- 1.5

- CONV_ERR: invalid operator for type TEXT

Post reply on HN