GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 129398
date export to csv is broken (or strange)
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Using gnumeric 1.2.1 with Fedora Core 1, if I create a new spreadsheet with a single cell, format the cell as DATE, 'M/D/YY', enter a date then 'Save As' text CSV, it exports the date '2/7/04' as 38024. If this is correct, it certainly violates the principal of least surprise. At any rate, I cannot see how this can be correct.
after a little more research I should add the following: The 'random' number exported is apparently the excel specific internal code for a date: number of days since the last day of the year 1899 (with a leap year bug). However, exporting this as CSV makes any subsequent import USELESS, since the 'date'ness of the field is lost, and it becomes just a number. Excel exports dates as MM/DD/YYYY (regardless of the date cell format apparently), thus this is a compatibility BUG.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 128936 ***