date recognition in LibreOffice Calc

[Swingletree]

Why is there no way to disable Date Recognition in Libreoffice Calc?
Out of all of my friends who used Open Office with me, and who now use Libre Office, I don’t know of a single one who has ever wanted to use the date function. I know because I asked.
Every one of them has had trouble with Calc reformatting their data to dates (which are not as easy to fix as text entries, by any means) while they were attempting to work.

It seems strange to me that this feature is even on by default (as opposed to off by default) but what’s even worse is that there is literally no way to disable this in the options menu; rather, it has to be done on a per-cell basis.

it is extremely disruptive to the workflow of myself and practically every Calc user I know.
I realize there are workarounds, and I don’t need them because I know them and I have to use them almost every day.

What is the reasoning behind this design choice? Is something being done?

[mariosv]

Just curious, can you detail the data having the problem?

[Wildcard]

At first I thought you meant you must handle cell formatting for each cell individually, which of course is false. (You select all the cells and choose “text” as a data type.)

Now if I understand correctly, you want a way to disable automatic date recognition globally, for all spreadsheets? Or at least, you want to know why that is not in the preferences section?

I can at least make a guess at the last question. It is probably for the same reason why there’s not an option to globally turn off automatic recognition of formulas. Because that’s what Calc is for…

In the vast, vast majority of cases, a user will expect that if he types in a date, it will be “understood” by his software as a date. If it doesn’t get “recognized”, he’s going to think “Hmmm, this software isn’t very good.” He’s not going to think, “Hmmm, there must be a global setting somewhere that’s been switched off so that dates don’t get recognized,” and then go hunting for that setting. (If that did happen and he actually found the setting, his inevitable question would be, “Why on earth is that even an option? Who would want to turn off the date recognition for all spreadsheets?” And we’d have to tell him, “Well, it was this guy Swingletree…”

[surruk51]

Please do not be dismissive of other people’s needs just because they do not match yours. I also find this ‘feature’ more trouble than it is worth.
I chose text as data type for the cells before pasting, and it still mangled my data. I also want to be able to turn off date recognition, because more often than not it mangles my data. Of course, a ‘Convert the selected cells to dates’ menu option would be a very useful adjunct for the occasions when I have something that I want treated as a date.

[pneumatics]

This is real madness. I have 35000 records (5 columns) pasted from Base to Calc. Some cells get recognized as dates which gives #!ARGS in other cells. What do you expect me to do?? Manually browse through all records and fix it?? Even if it would be possible (I would have to be mad to even start doing it) I still have no idea what was the initial value in the field…

I hate this date recognition since the beginning it always gets in a way. It should be easy to disable it at least per file.

[pneumatics]

Of course it useful sometimes, but at least try to fix it in my case - when all cells in a columns are recognized as numbers, then why on earth one on hundred should be treated differently??