Scientists rename genes because Excel saw them as dates

Scientists from the Human Gene Nomenclature Committee renamed 27 genes last year for a special reason. Excel kept converting the names of the genes into dates, which irritated many scientists.

The change is in the new guidelines for naming genes that HGNC has published in Nature. Scientists had difficulty with, for example, Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1, which until recently was called MARCH1. Excel automatically converted that to ‘March 1’ and scientists who use that program have to undo that every time. There is no way to stop Excel from doing that. MARCH1 is now called MARCHF1 and SEPT1 is now called SEPTIN1, so Excel no longer sees them as data and adjusts the contents of the cell on them.

HGNC coordinator Elspeth Bruford tells The Verge that it was better for the scientists to change the naming convention than for Microsoft to change how Excel works. “This is a very limited one use case for Excel software. So there is little reason for Microsoft to make a significant change to a feature that many other users often use. ”Microsoft has not responded to the issue.