Re: [libreoffice-users] Date problem in LO Calc 4.0.3.3

At 16:41 04/06/2013 -0700, Spencer Graves wrote:
> When I copy a date from one LO spreadsheet to another, it changes.

Much as you might be surprised by this, it is, I think, by design.

> Specifically, I have *.ods files DateProblem2add.ods and 
> DateProblemMerge.ods.  The first contains only 2013-05-30 in cell 
> A1.  The second contains only 2012-12-9 in cell A1.  I copy the 
> first date into cell A3 of the second file, where it appears 
> 2009-05-29 -- four years and one day before the date I thought I was 
> copying -- which is what I see in that cell in the attached 
> DateProblemMerge.ods.  This is using LO 4.0.3.3 under Windows 7.

Dates and times in a spreadsheet are stored internally as days and 
fractions of a day from a selected origin.  Displayed values such as 
your "2013-05-30" are merely the result of cell formatting.  If you 
go to Tools | Options... | LibreOffice Calc | Calculate | Date, you 
will see that there are three date origins to choose from.  If you 
copy dates between spreadsheets, the underlying numbers are 
copied.  If the date origins are different for your two spreadsheets, 
the copied values will be interpreted and displayed as different dates.

You will notice that two of the date origin choices are four years 
and two days apart.  Er, that's indeed four years and one day if you 
allow for Microsoft Excel's false belief that 1900 was a leap year.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


--
To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted