this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Microsoft Fixes Excel Feature That Forced Scientists to Rename Human Genes (gizmodo.com)
submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Microsoft Fixes Excel Feature That Forced Scientists to Rename Human Genes::Microsoft now allows users to disable automatic date conversion, which means scientists no longer have to worry about using alternative names for genes.

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[–] FelipeFelop 1 points 1 year ago

The problem happens with the anutonated import of data from a piece of equipment. It will be in .csv or .txt format. Excel will do the conversion as it tries to work out what is in each row or column.

The worksheet is then processed automatically by other software, so no human is there to find the row or column to change the format.

There’s an awful lot of data generated all the time so it would take too long to stop the automated process and manually change formats. Easier to rename the gene.