Hello all,

I am curious how to report a bug for MS Excel 2010 Pro, as the Microsoft Connect site indicates that Microsoft Excel is not accepting bug reports.

The rest of this post contains details of the defect; if you are merely instructing me on how to report a bug then these details may not be relevant to you

-----

The issue is that Microsoft Excel uses a base-15 leap year pattern for Hijri dates, and the Windows System Calendar and the DotNet HijriCalendar class both use the base-16 leap year pattern for the Arabic/Saudi Arabia culture.  I honestly don't know which of the Base-15 or Base-16 is more correct for Saudi Arabia, but I do know that these technologies are inconsistent in their leap year pattern, and I'm expecting that the system calendar will be regarded as correct solely because it's the system calendar.

From my understanding there are 11 leap years every 30 years in the Hijri calendar.  The "nth" year of each 30 year cycle is determined by taking the remainder of the year number when it is divided into 30.  For example, 1366 Mod 30 = 16, so 1366 is the 16th year of that cycle.  From my understanding it is agreed on which years are leap years for 10 of these leap years, but there is a camp that thinks the 15th year is a leap year, and there is a camp that thinks the 16th year is a leap year.

An inspection of the 12th month of each year can determine if that year is a leap year.  From my understanding the 12th month normally has 29 days, but in a leap year it has 30 days.

For example (using format YYYY-MM-dd):

1366-12-29 is the last day of the 1366th year in Microsoft Excel (i.e. they are not base 16).
1366-12-30 is the last day of the 1366th year in the Windows System Calendar (either Hijri or UmmAlQura) and in the DotNet HijriCalendar class (i.e. they are base 16).

1365-12-30 is the last day of the 1365th year in the Microsoft Excel (i.e. they are base 15).
1365-12-29 is the last day of the 1365th year in the Windows System Calendar (either Hijri or UmmAlQura) and in the DotNet HijriCalendar class (i.e. they are not base 15).

To be fair, I don't think anyone is dying from this defect, but I would appreciate it if it were consistent.

Regards,
--Jeff

• Edited by JPBlomgren Tuesday, June 30, 2015 6:28 PM typo