This one is going to be fun (if you don't use Excel)
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates (2020)
This week, the HGNC published new guidelines for gene naming, including for “symbols that affect data handling and retrieval.” From now on, they say, human genes and the proteins they expressed will be named with one eye on Excel’s auto-formatting. That means the symbol MARCH1 has now become MARCHF1, while SEPT1 has become SEPTIN1, and so on. A record of old symbols and names will be stored by HGNC to avoid confusion in the future.
So far, the names of some 27 genes have been changed like this over the past year, Elspeth Bruford, the coordinator of HGNC, tells The Verge, but the guidelines themselves weren’t formally announced until this week. “We consulted the respective research communities to discuss the proposed updates, and we also notified researchers who had published on these genes specifically when the changes were being put into effect,” says Bruford.
So ...
Microsoft Finally Fixes Excel Glitch That Caused Major Headaches for Scientists
https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-finally-fixes-excel-glitch-that-caused-major-headaches-for-scientists
Years after introducing Excel's automatic conversion features, Microsoft rolls out an update to prevent it from changing gene symbols to dates.
News
By Nick Evanson published October 25, 2023
But it really shouldn't have taken Microsoft this long to provide a solution.
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.
----
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 about potential errors with automatic conversions.
= new reply since forum marked as read