I have searched, Googled and a number of other things trying to find a way to get Microsoft Office Excel to allow me to input dates prior to 1900 as dates. I want to be able to sort them and do everything with pre 1900 dates that I can with post 1900 dates. I even gave in and thought about it myself, instead of trying to find what other people had already done. That was a real chore. I can’t find any way to enter pre 1900 dates and be able to manipulate them using MS Excel.
Why is this important to me? I am into genealogy and a lot of the dates I deal with are pre 1900. Also, I photo headstones and index cemeteries. You can imagine how may pre 1900 dates there are there. So, as you can see, this poses a problem for me.
What I have found is that Microsoft Excel simply will not do what I need it to. Therefore, I have to enter the dates as text and can’t sort them. What to do, what to do. That’s simple, use OpenOffice. It handles the pre 1900 dates just the same as it does the post 1900 dates. The problem here is if I give my data file to anyone that uses MS Excel they can’t use it. They get a string of "#" instead of the dates. The same thing applies when I post the data to the internet on my website. So I still have a problem. I either have to use MS Excel or not share my data.
I simply don’t understand why an office suite that cost as much as MS Office does can’t do the same thing that a FREE open source program like OpenOffice can do. I think it has to be another example of Microsoft’s greed. I think they don’t want to spend the money that would be required to write that part of the code. It’s cheaper to simply use their old routines and put them in a pretty package and then sell it to the world. Really Bad.
I created a file in MS Excel with the same data in a number of different columns and then did some formatting and sorting. I then did the same thing in OpenOffice. The results are below. What do you think? I think that OpenOffice is a superior product.
Microsoft Excel data
OpenOffice Calc data
As you can see, OpenOffice sorted the dates without a problem. That is more than I can say for Excel. The reason Excel doesn’t sort them correctly, and the reason the pre 1900 dates appear left justified, is that Excel converted them to text.
I just have two more things to say on the subject. They are; Microsoft, Wake up. And to all of you, Use OpenOffice.
Have a Great Day
Bob Jones