Over a year ago, Microsoft announced some changes it was going to make to its Excel apps, based on user feedback. Office Insider Preview users (now Microsoft 365 Preview users) could gain more control over the Excel app's defaults so they could shut down certain types of automatic data conversion.
Today, Microsoft is rolling out those improvements for all Excel users on both Windows and Mac platforms. In addition, the Microsoft 365 Insider blog post states it has added some improvements to this feature.
Microsoft stated:
Last year’s blog post explains how the initial version of the feature worked. Based on your feedback, we have:
- made the feature easier to find
- added more format support
- made the feature available in Excel for Mac
Excel app users can go to elect File > Options > Data > and finally Automatic Data Conversion. They can then go ahead and disable one or more of the automatic conversion options.
Here are the specific options that can be changed in the Excel apps:
- Remove leading zeros from numerical text and convert to a number.
- Truncate numerical data to 15 digits of precision and convert to a number that may be displayed in scientific notation, if needed.
- Convert numerical data surrounding the letter “E” to a number displayed in scientific notation.
- Convert a continuous string of letters and numbers to a date.
There's one known issue with the feature at the moment, as disabling conversions during macro execution will not work. There's no word on when or if this issue will be addressed.
The new conversion controls are now available for all Excel for Windows users running Version 2309 (Build 16808.10000) or later, and all Mac users with Version 16.77 (Build 23091003) or later. There's no word on if these new features will be added to the mobile or web editions of Excel.
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