I’m trying to avoid making my employer buy more outdated and overpriced copies of MS Excel 2010. I assured him and my co-workers in the office that most incompatibilities would be format or macro related and we wouldn’t lose data. Someone claimed to have typed the date directly in a cell and now the dates in many cells are wrong. They claim to have typed “2015” and they all say 2019 and some are just wrong. Can data typed directly into a cell change after saving over an XLSX spreadsheet, or was this most likely user error?
Verify if the option in:
Menu/Tools/Options/LIbreOffice calc/calculate - Date
was changed between default and 01/01/1904
LibreOffice help.
Date
Select the start date for the internal conversion from days to numbers.
12/30/1899 (default)
Sets 12/30/1899 as day zero.
01/01/1900 (StarCalc 1.0)
Sets 1/1/1900 as day zero. Use this setting for StarCalc1.0 spreadsheets containing date entries.
01/01/1904
Sets 1/1/1904 as day zero. Use this setting for spreadsheets that are imported in a foreign format.
should we use 01/01/1904 since everyone in the office is opening and saving ms xlsx files? o sorry i realize now I’m blind thank you
If someone claims to have typed “2015” & the cell says “2019” then they are lying. If a spreadsheet cannot get such basic issues correct, then it is not a spreadsheet.
Do check that the basics are correct. Look at:-
(menu):Tools - Options - Language Settings - Languages
…and check that the date-acceptance patterns match your locale + colleagues’ expectations.
Whilst there, I would also look at Load/Save|General & set for backup copies, etc…
If this helps then please tick the answer (
).