R
Richard Gadsden
This is a feature request, because as far as I can tell, the entire
Microsoft Wish Program has vanished from Microsoft's website - KB 114491
isn't there any more, (e-mail address removed) seems to have turned into a
blackhole address (well, the auto-ack isn't there any more).
If there is a better way of submitting a feature request or wish to
Microsoft then I would appreciate knowing it.
On to my feature request.
I would like to be able to represent dates for years before 1900CE in
Microsoft Excel and perform calculations with the normal formulas on
those dates.
I'm aware that Excel spreadsheets have one of two date systems, set in
Tools | Options | Calculation - either 1900 or 1904 date system, with
the 1900 date system the default in Windows and the 1904 date system the
default in Mac OS.
My suggestion is that Microsoft create a third date system, which
supports a date format including dates back to at least 1000 CE. I work
for a law firm in the UK and we regularly have to deal with eighteenth
and nineteenth century dates when performing property tax calculations,
which include a calculation based date that a property was last
transferred. I asked one of the lawyers what the earliest meaningful
date for this would be and he suggested that the likely answer was
either 1066 (the Norman Conquest) or 1086 (the Domesday Book). In
either case, 1000 would give enough dates for any purpose my business is
likely to require.
I appreciate that including very early dates does create issues with the
differences between the Gregorian and Julian calendars, and so forth,
and that any code that allowed a date to be input in a historic calendar
would have major internationalisation issues (even within Europe, there
are many different dates for the transition from the Julian to the
Gregorian calendar; including non-European calendars just makes things
more complicated), so this is explicitly not a request for support for
any new calendars that are not currently supported in Excel.
I would propose that the user then have to deal with converting a date
from a source document into the Gregorian calendar, rather than
expecting Excel to do so. Perhaps that would make for a useful smart
tag - detect a date input that was before, say, 1800 (and make that year
user-configurable) and remind the user to check that the source date is
Gregorian and not the Julian or other calendar.
Microsoft Wish Program has vanished from Microsoft's website - KB 114491
isn't there any more, (e-mail address removed) seems to have turned into a
blackhole address (well, the auto-ack isn't there any more).
If there is a better way of submitting a feature request or wish to
Microsoft then I would appreciate knowing it.
On to my feature request.
I would like to be able to represent dates for years before 1900CE in
Microsoft Excel and perform calculations with the normal formulas on
those dates.
I'm aware that Excel spreadsheets have one of two date systems, set in
Tools | Options | Calculation - either 1900 or 1904 date system, with
the 1900 date system the default in Windows and the 1904 date system the
default in Mac OS.
My suggestion is that Microsoft create a third date system, which
supports a date format including dates back to at least 1000 CE. I work
for a law firm in the UK and we regularly have to deal with eighteenth
and nineteenth century dates when performing property tax calculations,
which include a calculation based date that a property was last
transferred. I asked one of the lawyers what the earliest meaningful
date for this would be and he suggested that the likely answer was
either 1066 (the Norman Conquest) or 1086 (the Domesday Book). In
either case, 1000 would give enough dates for any purpose my business is
likely to require.
I appreciate that including very early dates does create issues with the
differences between the Gregorian and Julian calendars, and so forth,
and that any code that allowed a date to be input in a historic calendar
would have major internationalisation issues (even within Europe, there
are many different dates for the transition from the Julian to the
Gregorian calendar; including non-European calendars just makes things
more complicated), so this is explicitly not a request for support for
any new calendars that are not currently supported in Excel.
I would propose that the user then have to deal with converting a date
from a source document into the Gregorian calendar, rather than
expecting Excel to do so. Perhaps that would make for a useful smart
tag - detect a date input that was before, say, 1800 (and make that year
user-configurable) and remind the user to check that the source date is
Gregorian and not the Julian or other calendar.