How to have the same format for dates? - excel

When I try to export in excel a list of incidents from HPSM I have an issue; the date has different formats: "dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm" or "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss". It is a problem because when the day and the month are both less the 12th then I don't know which is month or which is day.
Is it a possibility to have the same format or to create a program to do this?

I don't know HP Service Manager, but please consider exporting the data into two different files, one for each date setting, as CSV or Excel.
Then you can use tools like Power Query or the Text Import Wizard to open the files and set the origin date format of the column. Excel will then show that date column in your PC's regional settings format.

Related

Excel interprets date entered differently among many users

I have a file with columns configured to format dates as yyyy/mm/dd. It's a shared file with a small team. Whenever I type "January 13" in a cell in the column, it returns a value of 2018/01/13, which is what the team wants. However, when my other colleagues enter the same "January 13" in that column, it returns a 2013/01/01 value. It's like Excel is interpreting the "13" as the year on his/her unit. We all use the same 2013 version and same computer model/type/brand.
What we tried so far:
-Comparing Excel applications to ensure the same configurations
-Saving the file as .xlsx instead of .xls
-Redoing the sheet into a new one
-Closing and opening the sheet
Yet none still worked. We hope to not go on the option of typing the whole date (January 13, 2018) as we somehow our fingers are dexterously trained to typing just January 13. Any insights on this please? Thanks! :)
The problem is in the Windows Regional Short Date settings.
If the short date settings are a variation of MDY, Excel will interpret your input(spelled out month and digits) as MD
If the short date settings are a variation of DMY; Excel will interpret your input as MY
In both cases, the Month is unambiguous. The short date format then interprets the digit based on the token following the Month token.
You will also see different results if you enter dates such as 1-12 vs 1-13 in the different environments.
If changing the short date settings is not an option (and the settings involved are MDY and DMY), one fix would be to always enter the dates as dd mmmm (13 January) as that would be interpreted as Jan 13, current year in either environment.
I would select all the cells/rows/columns that have dates and customize the format. Go to Home>Number and click on the dropdown (it might say "General" or "Short Date" or something). Click on "More Number Formats" and go to "Custom". In the cell under "Type:" put yyyy/mm/dd . Any way you type the date it should come out the same now. Either way, typing in number format should be easier than typing the month name.

Date formatting issues when opening CSV

I have a CSV report that contains a date/time field, but when I open it in Excel, it seems to try and auto format the date and time, but has some issues with certain dates.
If I open the CSV file in Notepad, all of the dates follow the same format, which is something like 2/1/17 12:00 AM (M/D/Y). However I get 2 different results, depending on the date. If the day is less than 12, it will display in yyyy-MM-dd (for example: 2002-01-17 12:00:00 AM), which is my system date format. If the day is > 12, it will display as 10/31/16 12:00 AM, which is exactly how it is formatted in the CSV source. So, in those cases it looks like it is being treated as text.
If I change my short date format to M/d/y, then everything works fine, however I believe we have standardized on yyyy-MM-dd, and this will need to be used by multiple people, so changing the date format for any users who need to use this spreadsheet isn't a great option.
Ideally, what I would like to do is prevent this from happening altogether, if possible by not having the dates be automatically formatted when the document is opened. Is that possible?

Excel dates - converting different date formats into a single format

Have a large raw data dump and I am trying to format the dates into a consistent format.
As you can see from the screenshot, there are two main formats, one custom mm-dd-yyyy hh:mm AM/PM and mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss. One is stored as general, while the other as a custom value.
I've tried to =left(A2,8), converting via text() and using text to columns, but can't bring the values to a consistent value.
It appears that your Windows regional settings for Short Date are DMY or similar. It is likely your data dump is in MDY format. That is why A2 and A4 are being converted to "real dates" (although incorrectly), and A3 is not since Excel does not know what do with month = 13. You will note that A2 is 1-Dec-2015 and I suspect that in the original data it is 12-Jan-2015.
EDIT: To expand a bit on the explanation. When something that looks like a date or time is entered into an Excel cell, Excel tries to change the result to a date, parsing the input according to the Windows Regional Short Date format. This sometimes has an undesireable outcome. For example, if your Windows Format is MDY but the date is input as DMY, input with days <=12 will be converted incorrectly, and input with days > 12 will be retained as text. This behavior cannot be "turned off" and causes many complaints from those who want to enter data that looks like a date, but is not. (For example, entering an odds ratio as 1-10 or 12:3 will get converted to a date or a time)
Several options
Change the output of the data so as to have the dates in DMY format.
Instead of OPENing the data file, do a Text Import. In later versions of Excel, you will find this on the Data Ribbon ► Get External Data ► From Text. This will open the Text import wizard and allow you to specify the MDY format of the incoming data before Excel transforms it.
After you have done one of the above, the result will be a "real" Excel date or date/time and you can format it how you like.
Write a IF() where if column B specifies "Custom" change format to standard.
For AM, just remove it(replace AM with nothing). For PM add 12 to the hours and replace PM with nothing.
For custom Replace - with / and append :00 to add the seconds to the custom ones too.

Excel adding dates to specific date format

I have dates coming out of a database into a column that have this format:
Column K
AUG-14-2015 08:31:32 AM
AUG-12-2015 06:10:03 PM
AUG-12-2015 05:17:51 PM
I want to add like '2.2' days to each of these and put them in Column L. I have formatted the column in this format:
mmm-dd-yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM
I wasn't sure if the dashes are causing the problem, but when I do a =K15+2.2 I get a !VALUE. Any ideas what I need to do? Thanks.
After some experimenting, it seems that while you can specify a date format "mmm-dd-yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM", the actual entry into the cells must be either a date in the system wide locale specific format, or a number of days since 1 January 1900.
So for example when you set a cell's format to custom:
"mmm-dd-yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM"
In my case (Windows 10 default UK locale settings, Excel 2010) for AUG-12-2015 06:10:03 PM, I can enter any of:
12/08/2015 06:10:03 PM
12/08/2015 18:10:03
42228.26
And also exchange the month 08 for Aug or AUG in any case and change the '/' for '-' in the dates.
For cells formatted "mmm-dd-yyyy hh:mm:ss AM/PM", the output for any of the above inputs is:
Aug-12-2015 06:10:03 PM
Note that there does not appear to be a means to force all-capitals for the month.
Note also that if you enter a date/time in the locale format it is automatically recognised and formatted as date/time.
So really your only option is to either change the format of the source data, pre-process the data into locale date/time format, or write a macro to do it within the spreadsheet. It may also work perhaps if you change your locale settings (System Settings, Language & Time), but that is perhaps less than satisfactory because it will affect date presentation for the whole system.
If you want to avoid VBA, then you can add a column("L") next to your data and enter:
=SUBSTITUTE(K1,"-","/")
Another solution would be to write code to do just that to your existing "K" Column

How to create and assign a Custom Format of date and time to an entire column in excel worksheet

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.

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