RE: [office-formula] Conflict between Part 1 and Part 2

[Eric Patterson <ericpa@exchange.microsoft.com>]

robert_weir@us.ibm.com [mailto:robert_weir@us.ibm.com] Wrote:
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I've tested this, and of the implementations represented on the TC:

Gnumeric, OpenOffice, Symphony, Google and KSpread do it correctly.

Excel does not.

I don't think number of existing documents in non-ODF formats is extremely 
relevant.
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The number of existing documents with this bug should have some relevance.  There are billions if not trillions of documents out there with this bug.  The days between 1-Jan-1900 and 28-FEB-1900 are less important than being able to transfer documents between applications in a way that insures that Dates, Serial Dates and all calculations involving them for dates after 1-Mar-1900 are correct.  

Having a flag to indicate whether 29-Feb-1900 should be allowed as a date is fine, but there needs to be a definitive way of defining what serial number represents 1-Mar-1900 such that date calculations can occur.  Note that since dates can be serial numbers they are often included in formulas as such and cannot be identified as dates or converted during a save operation.

-Eric