GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 549249
Auto-correction for custom format code
Last modified: 2008-08-25 19:31:14 UTC
Format code like "[Red];[Blue]", which used to work in gnumeric 1.6, no longer works with the gnumeric 1.8. Referencing Excel's behavior, Excel automatically corrects the format to "[Red]General;[Blue]General". It looks more reasonable being a gnumeric 1.6 user migrating to gnumeric 1.8.
What do you mean with: "[Red];[Blue]" no longer works? That is a valid (if useless) format code. For example "[Red]--;[Blue]-" will print double red dashes or a single blue dash depending on the sign of the content. The code you are mentioning is simply skipping the dashes.
I think he means two things: 1. In 1.6.3, we treat that empty format as "General" 2. In Excel, if you enter "[red];[blue]" it gets changed into "[Red]General;[Blue]General" Since TEXT(42,"[red];[blue]") returns "42" in Excel, it would seem that we need to do the translation at the format-creation time. Hence, unlike bug 548414, this needs to be fixed at the GOFormat level. --> goffice.
This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.