I am running an Advanced Filter on an excel data set from FRED. I've been trying to filter the data to include only January, April, July and October data (first month of each quarter). If I run an advanced filter with the criteria as a specific date (ex. 1/1/1995), the result returns as expected. However, as soon as I use any special search characters, (ex. 1/, 1//*, 1995 or 1/1/????) I get no results. I've read the excel documentation, and searched the internet for solutions but no one seems to be having this issue.
Ideally what I want to do is search for all of those months while excluding everything else (something like 1* OR 2* OR 3* or 4*) the first thing I need to figure out is why I can't seem to make filtering work period.
I'm guessing that the issue has something to do with how excel treats dates. Originally the dates were in the format DD-MM-YYYY but I realized that Excel was processing them as if they were in M-D-YYYY format so I changed the data to reflect that. I tried transforming the dates into regular text to get around that but Excel converted them to numbers that looked like "4/1/1995."
Keep in mind I am new to filtering so I'm probably making a rookie mistake.
Sample of Data and Criteria (Filter not applied)
observation_date FEDFUNDS
1*
observation_date FEDFUNDS
1/1/1995 5.53
2/1/1995 5.92
3/1/1995 5.98
4/1/1995 6.05
5/1/1995 6.01
6/1/1995 6.00
7/1/1995 5.85
8/1/1995 5.74
Wildcards only work on strings. Dates are not strings, but are numbers. So you need to use greater than and less than to set bounds in which to return numbers, as I have done below for the month of February. (Note that my dates are in non-US format)
Here is a picture showing a working example with the filtering criteria followed by the filtered data and the advanced filter window with the ranges used in my case. From A2 to A5 is the dates I want the advanced filter to work on.
Filtering by part of a date (the way you see it in the cell) would not be possible with FILTER as far as I know.
Your feedback/ comment is appreciated!
Related
I downloaded a file from a government source. There is a column of dates in mixed formats. Some appeared 12-25-99 while others were 25-Dec-99 and some were 12/25/99. I want to sort them newest to oldest. There are over 600,000 records but I tried everything on a sample of about 25 to save time.
I managed by brute force to get them all looking the same: 12/25/99. There is nothing I can do to get them to sort. Some of the list sort because they were all the same format to start with, generally 12-25-99 though it might have been 25-12-99. No matter. The ones that had slashes never integrated with the ones that started out with dashes.
I found 6 or 7 ideas on this site but none of them worked. Help if you think you can.
Thanks.
The data samples you list suggest that what you perceive as "dates" is at least partly text. Excel internally stores dates as numbers, with day values before and time values after the decimal point (or decimal comma, depending on your regional settings). These numbers can now be formatted to appear as dates.
To check which of the "dates" are really dates, select them all and change the format to "General". Any real dates will now show as numbers, whereas any "dates" that are really just text, will remain unchanged.
In order to sort this data chronologically, you will need to convert the text values to real dates.
There are several different approaches you could use for that. You could use a formula like DateValue() - this works well with text that has the date and month in the same order as your regional settings. So, if you use US settings with MDY order of a date, give that a try.
Otherwise, and especially if the original dates are a mix of DMY and MDY order, you will need to use more sophisticated data cleanup techniques, like Text To Columns or Power Query.
If I display a date in cell A1 using the cell format [$-8040D] d to show the day of the jewish month, I get a number (from 1 to 30) instead of -the way it is normally displayed- a hebrew letter.
So I want to use
=CHOOSE(A1,"א","ב","ג","ד","ה","ו","ז","ח","ט","י","יא","יב","יג","יד","טו","טז","יז","יח","יט","כ","כא","כב","כג","כד","כה","כו","כז","כח","כט","ל")
But even though I see a number 1-30 displayed in A1, what's really there is a date serial code (something like "44181").
I have tried N(), and VALUE().
What's the correct way to do it?
Thanks!
Excels stores dates numbers as per the Gregorian calendar with 1 = 1 Jan 1900 (and 1900 erroneously being deemed a leap year for competitive reasons).
So first you need to convert the date to the Jewish date (I'm assuming the Jewish Lunar calendar); extract the day of the month(with the TEXT function), and then convert that value to its Hebrew letter equivalent.
eg:
=CHOOSE(TEXT(A1,"[$-he-IL,8]dd"),"א","ב","ג","ד","ה","ו","ז","ח","ט","י","יא","יב","יג","יד","טו","טז","יז","יח","יט","כ","כא","כב","כג","כד","כה","כו","כז","כח","כט","ל")
or:
=CHOOSE(TEXT(A1,"[$-8040D]d"),"א","ב","ג","ד","ה","ו","ז","ח","ט","י","יא","יב","יג","יד","טו","טז","יז","יח","יט","כ","כא","כב","כג","כד","כה","כו","כז","כח","כט","ל")
So for today which is
the formula would return
The "correct" way to do it is to realize there is no problem here, no problem at all.
Yes, Excel uses a serial number dating system. However, it completely knows how to interpret it too. So you will have a serial number as the "real" content of A1, but can extract from it the day of the month value. You can do this with:
=TEXT(A1,"d")
This gets you a TEXT "6" if it is December 6. Often that fact (that it returns TEXT) can cause trouble. But only when Excel could expect you could mean either and has to guess which. In the case of the above formula it would be reasonable for it to assume you wanted it looked at as text since the function is... TEXT()...
But in this case, using it in the CHOOSE() function it can ONLY be useful if Excel treats it as a value rather than text. So it does. No need to add anything to force Excel to do so.
So you can just replace the A1 portion of your formula with the above TEXT() function. Then Excel will use it properly and select the correct day of the month from the list.
And that's all you need.
I have to report basically the same information from inspections to two different clients, both of whom have provided me with an Excel spreadsheet in their own preferred format, and password protected. I have put the two sheets into my own workbook, and have managed to get 'almost' all the data on both sheets to populate from my own data. Where I am stuck though is on the time logs.
Client 'A' has each time and date in a single column, in the format "12.29.12 14:30". Client 'B' has two columns, date as "12/29/12" in the first, and time as "1430" in the second.
I'm trying to avoid having to type all the same dates and times twice - it can be several dozen lines - both to save effort and to avoid errors. What I really need to do is either concatenate the date and time from client 'B's report and put it into client 'A's, or split the date and time up in 'A's so I can put it ito 'B's. I've tried several approaches, but just end up with error codes or meaningless numbers.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks,
Richard
Never mind... the very next thing I tried worked :-)
To anyone else reading this, the trick is not to concatentate the date and time values, but to add them together.
Richard
As you later pointed out in your own question, in order to manipulate date/times in Excel, you should add instead of concatenating.
The reason for this is that Excel stores all date/times as a number representing the number of days since January 1, 1900*. This number is stored as a 8-byte double.
Use Excel number formats to display the date/time format that you desire.
If you find in a worksheet that some cell's dates are in fact stored as text, use the DATEVALUE function.
*By default, Excel 2010 for Windows uses the number of days since 1900. There is an option to use the number of days since 1904 for compatibility with other versions.
It seems that every week or so someone posts a question about dates being converted (corrupted?) to American format. Like many others, I have attempted to help but the problem is elusive. I now wonder if I have discovered the cause.
I am working on an application in which I need to extract data from an Excel worksheet and output it as strings formatted to match the value the Excel user can see. So if the value is “1” formatted to display as “1.00” then I want the string to be “1.00”.
I achieve this effect by testing the cell value to be a number, date or time. If it is, I retrieve the number format and use it to format the cell value so:
With .Cells(Row, Column)
Output string = Format(.Value, .NumberFormat)
End With
In most cases this gives me exactly the output I require. However, sometimes I get American dates and times when the source is formatted as a UK date or time.
After much experimentation with Excel 2003 and Excel 2007, I have discovered the cause. (I do not have access to Excel 2010 but from questions I deduce it has the same problem.) This question is in part intended to reveal this problem to the world because I can discover nothing on the internet to indicate that anyone else has noticed it. (No doubt someone will reply that they googled “xyz” and got the answer immediately.) However, the main purpose of this question is to seek suggestions for obtaining the result I need in all situations.
Typically I enter dates as, for example, “23mar12”. Excel recognises this as a date and formats it as “23-Mar-12”. I can select Format Cells and enter or select a custom format or select one of the date formats so I can have any format I can imagine wanting including non-English names for days and months.
However, in one case the format I select is not the format that is recorded: Custom format “dd/mm/yyyy” is recorded as Date format “* 14/03/2001”. This is not obviously a problem until further down the line.
I created a column of dates and times and formatted each with a different custom or standard format. I wrote a macro to extract the NumberFormat for each of these dates and times and write it as a string to an adjacent column. I also formatted the value using the number format and wrote that string to a third column.
In a number of cases the format selected and recorded by Excel was not the format returned by NumberFormat:
Excel format NumberFormat
Date: * 14/03/2001 m/d/yyyy
Date: * 14 March 2001 [$-F800]dddd, mmmm dd, yyyy
Date: 14/03/2001 dd/mm/yyyy;#
Date: 14/03/01 dd/mm/yy;#
Date: 14/3/01 d/m/yy;#
Date: 14.3.01 d.m.yy;#
Date: 2001-03-14 yyyy-mm-dd;#
Date: 14 March 2001 (1) [$-809]dd mmmm yyyy;#
Date: 14 March 2001 (2) [$-809]d mmmm yyyy;#
Custom: hh:mm:ss h:mm:ss
Time: * 13:30:55 [$-F400]h:mm:ss AM/PM
Time: 13:30:55 (1) hh:mm:ss;#
Time: 13:30:55 (2) h:mm:ss;#
Time: 01:30:55 PM [$-409]hh:mm:ss AM/PM;#
Time: 1:30:55 PM [$-409]h:mm:ss AM/PM;#
The values (1) and (2) in the Excel format column were added by me to indicate that there are two apparently identical formats. As can be seen from the NumberFormat column, in each case the second version suppresses a leading zero.
Most changes have no important effect. “[$-F800]” and so on are apparently dummy values with no effect. Apparently you can replace “F800” with an Microsoft country code to have the names of days and months translated to the language of that country.
However, the three standard formats that Microsoft marks with an asterisk are changed unacceptably. The dates are changed from little endian to middle endian; the time is changed from 24 hour to 12 hour and the day of the week has been added to “* 14 March 2001”.
The asterisk against the dates, references the comment: “Except for items that have an asterisk () in the Type list (Number tab, Format Cells dialog box), date formats that you apply do not switch date orders with the operating system.” The asterisk against the time, references the comment: “Except for items that have an asterisk () in the Type list (Number tab, Format Cells dialog box), time formats that you apply do not switch time orders with the operating system.”
If I have to, I can warn my users that standard date and time formats may not give the result desired. However, if they want the popular format “dd/mm/yyyy”, they cannot have it. “dd-mm-yyyy”, for example, is OK but custom format “dd/mm/yyyy” becomes date format “* 14/03/2001” becomes “m/d/yyyy”.
Returning to my opening point: is this strange handling of one particular date format the reason so many people claim their dates are sometimes being converted to American format and is this why the problem is so elusive? I have come across this type of problem elsewhere of one group of Microsoft programmers not knowing what another group are doing. Is this why some functions always work and other sometimes don’t? Some Microsoft programmers know where to look for the correct format and others don’t?
More importantly, for me, can anyone suggest:
How I obtain the true date or time format?
Some other way of determining the user’s chosen display format for a date or time?
BTW 1: I recall that thirty or so years ago I was told that the American military do not use month/day/year format; only American civilians use this format. Can anyone tell me if this is true?
BTW 2: The similar problem is with Excel colours. Excel holds its colours as "ggbbrr" while everybody else holds them as "rrggbb". The programmers for the .Net Excel inter-op were not told and and did not reverse the Excel colour number before using it to control the screen.
I have mainly come up against formatting and date issues when opening text files which have been saved with different regional settings. Two useful cell properties for dealing with this are:
.Text returns the cell value as it is displayed
.Value2 returns the unformatted cell value or date serial number.
As you say, standard date and number formats depend on windows regional settings and this may not be desired behavior as the same workbook can display differently in different regions. MS introduced the regional code prefixes in number formats (circa Excel 2000?) which enforce consistent display if needed but they need to be explicitly selected.
If you really want to see a date or number as the user entered it, you could extract the contents of the .xlsx file looking at the worksheet cell format and the shared strings xml definitions which list the number formats in the saved workbook. I don't really see a need to do this though as the underlying value is stored internally as a serial number and this will not change.
BTW 1: It's been almost 30 years since I was in the military...
I worked on helicopters and I was taught to use a format such as this in the aircraft logbooks: 3 Apr 12. So, that's how I still write dates. This way, there's no wondering about 4/3/2012 - is it April 3 or March 4?
I hacked this: I rewrite the original data in a known format. it relies on DateSerial and TimeSerial:
'Google spreadsheet stores dates in USA format (MM/DD/YYYY). We're in Australia, using DD/MM/YYYY, so we need to swap them.
'
With dc 'the cell who contains a date in USA format.
d = .Value 'capture value in USA format
t = TimeValue(d)
.NumberFormat = "dd/mm/yyyy" 'set to OZ format, so Excel knows the values were swapped in its internal math.
.Value = DateSerial(Year(d), Month(d), Day(d)) 'DateSerial takes y,d,m. We swap Month and Day components, to get OZ format dates
.Value = .Value + TimeSerial(Hour(t), Minute(t), Second(t))
dc.Font.Bold = True ' We bold the cells that are swapped, for debugging
End With
End If
I want a customized format(with milliseconds also) in such a way to handle for a date and time in Microsoft Excel.
Sample date and time:
08.25.2010 00:52:09.359
For understanding of above sample date time, it is 25th August 2010 12 hrs 52mins 9seconds 359 milliseconds(AM).
Please provide a custom Format to handle the above mentioned sample date and time and finally to apply for a column.
In Excel 2003 I use the following for time with fractions of second:
"hh:mm:ss,000"
(note: my decimal point is a "," - German)
so a time entered as 12:13:14,1516 will be displayed as 12:13:14,152
Hope this works for you
Edit 28-Nov-2012
I recently migrated to Excel 2010. Special format using up to 3 zero's after a comma for seconds as described above still works. More than 3 zero's however are not accepted.
I'm not certain what you mean by "not recognizing the dates" but the following custom format would give you the format you're looking for. You'll have to adjust the millisecond separator "." according to your localization, of course.
mm.dd.yyyy hh:mm:ss.000
Applying it to a column is as easy as right clicking the column header, selecting Format Cells, choosing Custom on the left and pasting that format string into the Type box.
If you're trying to enter dates in this format, I don't believe that Excel will support that. I don't know of any option to set the date separators to a "." for Excel. Even setting the date format to use dots under the Regional and Language Options doesn't make Excel recognize that.