Microsoft Finally Fixes Excel Glitch That Caused Major Headaches for Scientists

pcmag.com:

Scientists give every gene a name and alphanumeric code (called a symbol) to help coordinate research. Unfortunately, those symbols can sometimes resemble dates, and Excel will "helpfully" convert them to actual dates. After causing many problems, an update is here to save the day.

Excel's insistence on automatically converting gene symbols to dates is so bad that scientists had to rename the genes to avoid it. The problem comes down to how genes are named and how Excel's automatic conversions work (or, rather, its lack of fine-tuning options). Typically, genes will get a name like "Differentiated embryonic chondrocyte expressed gene-1" (yes, that's an actual example), and for the sake of sanity, an abbreviation: in this case, Dec1. And from there, you can guess where this is going.

Scientists use Excel to compile and work with data, and when they enter a gene like Dec1 or Mar1, Excel automatically converts it to date: 1-Dec or 1-Mar. That completely wrecks the data, and the problem only gets worse if any intentional data manipulation, like formulas, is involved. And naturally, Excel is a popular tool since it doesn't require a lot of expertise.

To make matters worse, Excel didn't have an option to turn automatic conversions off. There was no avoiding the issue: it had to be noticed, manually corrected, and then saved carefully. One study in 2016 examined 3,597 published papers and found errors introduced by Excel in a fifth of them. 

But now, Excel finally has an update that should help. And it's so simple you might wonder why it didn't arrive sooner: you can now turn automatic conversions off. Head to Excel Options, and you'll find the new setting in the Data submenu. This adds to other improvements that gave warnings