Calc: commands in menu Format | Change case doesn't work on a formatted date Step to reproduce : 1: new document 2: enter a date (1/2/2015 - 1 feb. 2015) 3: format cell, number is a date, pattern = "MMMM" --> cell display "february" (all lowercase) 4: use Format | Change case to get an uppercase on the first letter or all uppercase --> nothing happens. Expected behavior : the cell MUST render the date with the appropriate casing (e.g "February" or "FEBRUARY") If it is not possible (I feel the function is just a one shot text transformation), then : - Either add a "font effect" named "Case" or something like that, that allow to specify the casing (not limited to dates) - Or extends the pattern syntax to specify what case rendering to use. (e.g. I tried something like "Mmmm", but it could be something like "MMMM[case:WordStarstWithUppercase]"
Hi David, thanks for reporting. As you have comment, I think change case will never work in a format result. Format result is language dependent, e.g. in Spanish is lowercase, English US is first letter uppercase. If there are not dependent cells, it's possible use TEXT() function to format the result, and applying on it the UPPER()/PROPER()/LOWER() functions.
Unfortunately for me I have hundreds of cascading dependent cells (i.e _value_ = _previous_value_ + 1). Well I still think that it would be nice to have a font effect for specifying case.
changing summary
(In reply to David SPORN from comment #2) > Unfortunately for me I have hundreds of cascading dependent cells (i.e > _value_ = _previous_value_ + 1). > > Well I still think that it would be nice to have a font effect for > specifying case. I don't see any particular reason for this not to exist, so Status -> NEW (cc'ing Jay -- he might have something useful to say)
Not sure if this is possible as date patterns seem to be case-insensitive, so there isnt a difference between "MMMM D, YYYY" and "mmmm D, YYYY" or "Mmmm D, YYYY". This is different from the way php handles its date format, which does allow have lower-case, title-case and upper-case variants. I think this would likely need to be taken up with a calc expert to see if it possible to achieve this with date patterns.
That's why I would rather add case effect in the tab "Font Effect". It's true that I originally also thought about extending the date patterns, but on second thought, it would break compatibility badly. I believe that adding a font effect setting for case effect would have less side effect, and could be used in other usecases (e.g. formatting the result of a macro -I've just thought about that, looking for another use case-) On the other hand, it could be a problem to consider that a "font effect" instead of a formatting effect. Then, looking at the "number" tabs in the format dialog box, I see a section "Options" just before the format descriptor, --> the case effect could be added there as a drop-down list with "automatic", "lowercase", "uppercase", etc... What do you think about this ?
Font effects are not random, it's a predefined set of options that has to work across all plattforms and applications. Change case is a function, applied directly to the content and effective on text but not numbers (which a date still is). What you can do is to use inbuilt functions. =LOWER(TEXT(A1,"dd. mmmm yyyy")) would convert today into "22. september 2020". WF for the font effects addition. And sorry for the latency; we must make faster decisions.