OnlyOffice desktop converts any digits with almost any seperator to date format

Desktop editors
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1

No regional standard in the world has date format like 3-5-7 or 3.5.7 or 3/5/7 or 2/3 or 3/4. No human perceives those as dates. So why OnlyOffice converts them to date format? How to prevent this behavior?

The only way I know is to set each required cell format to “Text”. In many cases there are columns with mixed data types so it’s very inconvenient and time consumed to format some cells as text, while others should stay intact. In any case before editing new table I should decide, which columns exactly should not be dates, and set format for them as Text.

In average real life spreadsheet table there are just couple of columns with dates, while many others contain different data formats. So who decided to format EACH cell as date by default? Isn’t it more useful not to convert text to date format until user sets the column or cell exactly as date? Ok, convert any cell but only if entered text matches the regional date standard, not just fraction or subtraction or release version?

How to prevent formatting text, that doesn’t really look like date, to date without manually setting cell format as text?

2

Hey @Corvex, :wave:

We mostly followed Microsoft Excel’s behavior here because most users are already used to it — that makes the transition from Excel to ONLYOFFICE feel more seamless. That’s why the “convert everything that looks remotely like a date” logic stayed.

Still, two practical ways to prevent it:

  1. Pre-format cells/columns as Text
    Select the cells/column → Home tab → Number format → click the dropdown → choose Text
    (or press Ctrl+1 → Category → Text → OK)
    → after that ONLYOFFICE will no longer try to auto-convert anything in those cells.

  2. Force text entry with a leading apostrophe
    Type '3-5-7 or '1/2 (the single quote is invisible in the cell, but it tells the editor “this is plain text, don’t touch it”).

Both workarounds are a bit manual, I know… :roll_eyes: