>> You might be used to OOo Calc changing your date formats for you on >> the fly, but I enter dates in the format that I would like to use >> them. > > That's exactly what Calc does *not* do. It applies the format *you* have set > or some default which depends on it's own locale (Hebrew, German, UK > English, whatever) independently from the operating system. >
I insist that it doesn't. Starting from a clean ~/.openoffice.org configuration, what must I configure to have calc use the yyyy-mm-dd format by default? This is my locale info: $ locale LANG=he_IL.utf8 LANGUAGE= LC_CTYPE="he_IL.utf8" LC_NUMERIC="he_IL.utf8" LC_TIME=en_DK.utf8 LC_COLLATE="he_IL.utf8" LC_MONETARY="he_IL.utf8" LC_MESSAGES="he_IL.utf8" LC_PAPER="he_IL.utf8" LC_NAME="he_IL.utf8" LC_ADDRESS="he_IL.utf8" LC_TELEPHONE="he_IL.utf8" LC_MEASUREMENT="he_IL.utf8" LC_IDENTIFICATION="he_IL.utf8" LC_ALL= $ date +%x 2009-12-08 >>> MSO Excel respects this, at least as configured at my >>>> >>>> university. How can I configure OOo Calc to do this as well? > > What you expect is an automagical auto-formatting which magically guesses > some number format from your input and applies it. As far as I know, Excel > does not do this. I want no magic. I want Calc to recognise the ISO standard yyyy-mm-dd format as a date and treat it as such by default. > You've got to enter all 3 numbers for year, month and day including the > leading "20", the dashes and the leading "0" in "-01", which is not what > most users want to do. That is exactly what I want. I want to enter 2009-12-13 and have Calc recognize that as the 13th day of December, 2009. > I bet you work with text values and Excel treats numeric text automatically > as numbers (automatically evaluating the same text differently on different > systems!). No, they work with dates. How much were we betting? > This will work similarly in OOo 3.2. However, OOo will accept numeric > strings only if they represent an ISO-time or integer number. So you may > enter the fully formatted ISO dates as text. yyyy-mm-dd is an ISO standard. > What does your Excel evaluate when you enter "1/2/3"? 1st February, 2nd > January 2003, 3rd February 2001? Does it display "1/2/3" as a formatted > number or as text? > I do not care what Excel (not _my_ Excel, Excel does not run on Ubuntu) evaluates when the user enters 1/2/3. 1/2/3 is not formatted as yyyy-mm-dd which is what I am interested in. I would check it for you, but I am not at the university at the moment. >> That is nice, but it is not what I need. I need the dates to be set as >> yyyy-mm-dd by default, as opposed to their current default which is >> confusing to those not familiar with American dates. >> >> > Why by default? This is impossible to do and there is no workaround other > than using the program that works for you. By default because the current default is confusing and we never use anything other than this format. > Calc's behaviour is almost the same as in all versions of Excel I know > (-2003). It is perfectly acceptable since there is always a clear > distinction between numbers and text, many alternative input methods and a > hierarchical system of cell styles. As said, the Excel at the university understands that 2009-12-13 is a date. I do not know if it is a default install or not. I believe that this is MSO 2003 like you mention. > My OOo never shows any US formatting unless I tell it to do so. > If I tell nothing (all default), some US user will see US figures, but that > should be no problem at all. > My OOo shows US dates by default, even though that is not my locale setting. -- Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
