Remember [Wayback/Archive] Guidelines for human gene nomenclature | Nature Genetics?**
You might not, but this was what pointed me to it back in 2020: [Wayback/Archive] Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates – The Verge.
The article was a result of Excel mangling import data for decades. Somehow finally it did get Microsoft’s attention and more than 3 years later, they issued options (with mangling still being the default) to help workaround the problems.
The 2004 article [Wayback/Archive] Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics | BMC Bioinformatics | Full Text demonstrated this import problem which had been present for quite a while already (it even has a csh
Script to scan for SymbolMutation error).
The gene nomenclature people by now have moved to a different naming scheme, but maybe other people can benefit from the Excel updates of which you can find more through these links: