Figure 1From: Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformaticsScreen shot of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet illustrating errors caused by default conversion of gene names to dates. Columns A, E, and I contain the correct gene names. Columns B, F, and J contain the corresponding underlying internal Excel date representation resulting from the forced default date conversion. Columns C, G, and K contain the corresponding default format date conversions. To create this table, we prepared a tab-delimited text file in which each gene name was repeated three times side by side. The correct gene names in columns A, E, and I were retained by opening this text file with Excel, and selecting "text" mode for columns A, E, and I in the Text Import Wizard Step 3 of 3 that appears while opening a file in Excel. Subsequently, the format menu "number" option (with zero decimal places) was applied to columns B, F, and J to display the internal date format.Back to article page