gnumeric-1.2.1-1 When files are exported from gnumeric as CSV, any dates in the sheet are saved as numbers rather than understandable dates. This is particularly galling when importing a CSV and then exporting it produces completely different output. The date format exported does not appear to be understood by other programs. Reproducible every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open gnumeric 2. Enter some dates, eg: A1=1/1/1970,A2=1/1/1900,A3=23/3/1981,A4=2/2/2004 3. Save the sheet using the text output converter, selecting comma as the seperator. Actual results: When opened in vi, results are similar to: 25569 1 29668 38019 Expected results: Exported data to be in some sort of understandable (ideally configurable) format, eg: 1970-1-1 1900-1-1 1981-3-23 2004-2-2 Really this needs to be configurable to be able to round-trip files as closely as possible. This behaviour was not seen under Redhat 8 running gnumeric gnumeric-1.0.9-2 (I haven't tested RH9).
Yeah, gnumeric is saving the dates as the number of days since the end of 1899. The developers of gnumeric are aware of it at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128936. For what its worth calc in OpenOffice doesn't exhibit this behaviour.
With at least gnumeric 1.2.12 (FC3) choose file->save as->Text export (configurable) and click through to "Choose export format" and select "Preserves Formats" and gnumeric will save the date as it appears on screen