Seems like if it bugs you, just ctrl+a then set the number format, same way you might set the font and size at the start of a word doc.
Just tested in LibreOffice calc: 30937930503010769238 is mangled to scientific notation: 3,09379305030108E+19 . If I change the format to anything (but it's already a generic number) than it becomes 30 937 930 503 010 800 000.00 or something. And if I change the format of the cell to the text it becomes... 3,09379305030108E+19 again.
And yes it's a number, though it doesn't get used as such in my case. If it was really used for anything of value - I would be really pissed for the 30k inaccuracy.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2008/04/1...
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/decimal-precision-how-to-have-...
Where i work, transaction records have an ID that is a 20 digit numeric code. If you are not very careful when importing that, pasting that, or editing cells, Excel will just strip out data because it’s priority is to convert it to a lossy format.
Imagine you have an 18 digit number that happens to end in a couple zeros and Excel "helpfully" converts this to scientific notation. Ok, you say, just set the number format, except then you don't get your original number, you get something else. This is because Excel (and Google Sheets) silently convert numbers. At least in Google Sheets if you explicitly Import a sheet you can uncheck the box to convert and it will come in as plain text, but you have to do that every time.
So yes, I would prefer to just display long numbers. It's not paper and I can resize columns to fit.
I agree that for all its "smart" pattern matching features, Excel should be able to figure out when to give you a better storage precision, and handle it fluidly in the background. Seems like we could assume one doesn't import a ton of extra digits for no reason.