Google Docs is interpreting space-separated numbers as date fields

[mitchellsundt]

Migrated to getodk/aggregate#27 by spacetelescope/github-issues-import

Originally reported on Google Code with ID 462

From a user:

I have a ODK aggregate form that I am uploading to Google docs. There
is multiple select sections in it with numeric underlying values, i.e.
1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 etc. Now uploading gives me in the coloumn, just two
numbers, say "3 5". No problem here, sending to Google docs, google
change my data to a date. For the above I get 3/5/2011. Formatting the
column to text is no use either, since the original data is lost
already, at least I must manually change it back to "3 5".

How can I prevent this from happening, other than changing the
underlying value to text?

----------------
Will see what can be done to get Google Docs to not do this.

Reported by mitchellsundt on 2011-12-05 17:10:03

[mitchellsundt]

Migrated to opendatakit/aggregate#27 (comment) by spacetelescope/github-issues-import

No progress.

Reported by mitchellsundt on 2013-03-26 16:31:13

[mitchellsundt]

Migrated to opendatakit/aggregate#27 (comment) by spacetelescope/github-issues-import

Hi,

Maybe you can set all the cells by default in PlainText ?
setNumberFormat('plain text');

Reported by peron.clem on 2013-04-07 12:04:06

[mitchellsundt]

Migrated to opendatakit/aggregate#27 (comment) by spacetelescope/github-issues-import

This may be something you can do on the website. 

When setting up the publisher, the column is emitted as a string value, and there isn't
much more we can do from the publisher-creation side.

Reported by mitchellsundt on 2013-04-08 18:31:21

[mitchellsundt]

Migrated to opendatakit/aggregate#27 (comment) by spacetelescope/github-issues-import

I mean this function no ?

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/spreadsheet/range#setNumberFormat%28String%29

you can put 'plain text'.

Reported by peron.clem on 2013-04-10 04:48:21