Until the day where everyone is computationally savvy and can do their processing in Python/R/Julia, it is the state of the world. As a matter of fact, HUGO agreed to rename some of the worst offender genes to Excel-friendly formats[0].
[0]https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...
“The problem of Excel software (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, USA) inadvertently converting gene symbols to dates and floating-point numbers was originally described in 2004.”
“RIKEN identifiers were described to be automatically converted to floating point numbers (i.e. from accession ‘2310009E13’ to ‘2.31E+13’).”