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> this makes entering dates or modifying formulas in excel online near impossible. It would be so much easier, if the us finally stopped using this middle-endi

by ascar 8y ago

> this makes entering dates or modifying formulas in excel online near impossible. It would be so much easier, if the us finally stopped using this middle-endian date format. It's logically flawed and too prone for misinterpretation. Further the US is the only country in the world to insist on using it. yyyy-mm-dd or dd-mm-yyyy are both fine (I actually prefer the first, though my country uses the latter) and logically consistent. While they are at it, they could also switch to the metric system.

vxNsr 8y ago
the dates issue is actually a little more confusing than you'd think because when entering the date online you need to enter it as dd/mm/yyyy but it will display as mm.dd.yyyy (did you catch that, they change the separator too). Re: formulas, they are all in german which means that unless I know the german equivalent word that microsoft chose, I can't make any modifications or even really write new formulas.
- ascar 8y ago
  Actually Excel is smart here. It knows that Germany uses dots, but slashes are usually an indicator for the US. So you enter mm/dd/yyyy and it comes out as dd.mm.yyyy. (you see, you entered it flipped in your described experience). The easiest way for me is to enter it yyyy-mm-dd in a date formatted column and it will always catch the correct date. I feel the pain with the function names. I know some in German and some in English, because I just switched to the native language at some point. But the translations are easily findable in the web [1] and there is even a built in function translator tool [2]. [1] https://www.excel-function-translation.com/index.php?page=english-german.html https://www.excel-function-translation.com/index.php?page=en... [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/excel-functions-translator-f262d0c0-991c-485b-89b6-32cc8d326889 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/excel-functions-tra...

by ascar 8y ago

vxNsr 8y ago

the dates issue is actually a little more confusing than you'd think because when entering the date online you need to enter it as dd/mm/yyyy but it will display as mm.dd.yyyy (did you catch that, they change the separator too). Re: formulas, they are all in german which means that unless I know the german equivalent word that microsoft chose, I can't make any modifications or even really write new formulas.

ascar 8y ago
Actually Excel is smart here. It knows that Germany uses dots, but slashes are usually an indicator for the US. So you enter mm/dd/yyyy and it comes out as dd.mm.yyyy. (you see, you entered it flipped in your described experience). The easiest way for me is to enter it yyyy-mm-dd in a date formatted column and it will always catch the correct date. I feel the pain with the function names. I know some in German and some in English, because I just switched to the native language at some point. But the translations are easily findable in the web [1] and there is even a built in function translator tool [2]. [1] https://www.excel-function-translation.com/index.php?page=english-german.html https://www.excel-function-translation.com/index.php?page=en... [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/excel-functions-translator-f262d0c0-991c-485b-89b6-32cc8d326889 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/excel-functions-tra...