Come on, there is no room for anyone to have a preference here when an excel document is meant to be storing the names of genes and would never need to have a date or time in it, and can very easily get corrupted beyond repair if someone turns date conversion on. (For context, genome research is the whole reason this toggle was added in the first place.) Even something like Vim lets you enforce file-specific settings with a header.
At the same time, we're clearly shooting ourselves in the foot by using Excel for this. This feature is just a hodge-podge solution to the problem of Excel not having strict data types. There should be enough cautionary tales (https://eusprig.org/research-info/horror-stories/) for everyone to know to avoid Excel.
Excel is not designed to waste the time of frequent, experienced users while hand-holding casual users. It's designed to make power users very fast and accurate while possibly confusing casual and new users.
At the same time, we're clearly shooting ourselves in the foot by using Excel for this. This feature is just a hodge-podge solution to the problem of Excel not having strict data types. There should be enough cautionary tales (https://eusprig.org/research-info/horror-stories/) for everyone to know to avoid Excel.