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

Probably MM/DD (2 Jan) vs DD/MM (1 Feb) since Excel uses it's current locale for parsing. (=SUM in en-US, =SOMME in fr-CA for example... making any SaaS app in Canada that exports xlsx files is always rough.)

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

#6

Post by psychoslave » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

kubb wrote: post #3

mywacaday wrote: post #2

I got 45690

Depends if you have American dates or normal dates, I guess

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

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

#7

Post by criddell » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 2:20 PM UTC

I've never understood why they don't let you turn off automatic date parsing. That one feature has caused me more grief than anything else in Excel.

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

#8

Post by MiddleEndian » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

psychoslave wrote: post #6

kubb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you have American dates or normal dates, I guess

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.

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

#9

Post by ruszki » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

psychoslave wrote: post #6

kubb wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if you have American dates or normal dates, I guess

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

Or Hungarians for example.

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

#10

Post by pasc1878 » Mon, Apr 07, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

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.