I have an Excel file storing a thousand lines of dates. Each date seems to be (auto)formatted as a Date. A (PHP Excel) parser I'm using (really can't update/use another one) is parsing this to a string which will occur in the number of days till 1900.
Is there a way to format the values in Excel being simple text "08.03.1991" to get this file parsed correctly?
I could add a quote: "'08.03.1991" but I need an (Excel-based) one-action-solution for all the thousand lines.
Remark: Since this is a file of a user I can't just write simple VBA-Script or so to handle this since there will be new files in the future and the User needs to be able to solve this alone.
I admit I am not quite sure what you have and what you want but it may be worth trying: Select column of dates, apply Text to Columns with Tab as delimiter and in step 3 of 3 select Text.
You could use the TEXT function like this:
=TEXT(A1,"dd.mm.yyyy")
For more details have a look here
Related
I have a spreadsheet I need to make in Google Sheets. The source of some of the data is exported to an Excel sheet. The data arrives in a dd/mm/yyyy format and I need to display it in a MON d format (Ex Sep 5).
The problem is both excel and sheets look at the date that arrives and think it is mm/dd/yyyy.
For example, 02/08/2022 is believed to be Febuary 8 even though it should be Aug 2. The problem then arises that neither of these platforms end up knowing how to convert this to Aug 2 and I end up having to do this manually.
Does anyone know how to get around this?
I have tried adjusting the format of the date, as well as using DateValue to convert (this fails since it understands the date as mm/dd/yyyy even when it is dd/mm/yyyy).
Any leads would be appreciated!
Thanks!
In Google Sheets, choose File > Settings > Locale and select a locale that uses the dd/mm/yyyy date format, before importing the data. You can then format the date column the way you prefer.
in gs:
=TEXT(REGEXREPLACE(A1&""; "(\d+)\/(\d+)\/(\d+)"; "$1/$1/$3"); "mmm d")
Try the following and format the result to your liking
=INDEX(IF(ISNUMBER(U2:U5),U2:U5,
IF(U2:U5=DATEVALUE("1899-12-30"),,
(MID(U2:U5,4,3)&LEFT(U2:U5,3)&RIGHT(U2:U5,4))*1)))
(Do adjust the formula according to your ranges and locale)
Functions used:
INDEX
IF
DATEVALUE
ISNUMBER
TRUNC
MID
LEFT
RIGHT
Well, for a formulaic solution, if the date is in A1, then the following places the correct date in B1:
=DATEVALUE(TEXT(A1,"DD/MM/YYYY"))
The TEXT function makes a string that will be the same form as your imported string out of the date produced during import. DATEVALUE then gives the proper date you desired.
The trick is in the TEXT step in which you reverse month and day in the string for DATEVALUE.
Naturally, instead of a helper column, it could just be wrapped around any reference to a date from column A, though one would have to remember to do so for all the years the spreadsheet is in use.
If you are importing, not just opening a .CSV file via File|Open and going from there, you have an opportunity to solve all your problems. You use the Ribbon menuing system's Data menu, select the very leftmost thing, Get Data and from the (no arguing THIS isn't a menu) menu that drops down, Legacy Wizards, then finally From Text (Legacy) which will open the old Excel Import Wizard. (You may notice this is very like the Data|Text to Columns Ribbon menu choice and that is because that choice is the old wizard minus the steps at the start that go looking to another file for the data because it knows, by law, that it has to already be in the spreadsheet... in other words, it looks the same because it IS the same.)
Then make selections for the first couple dialogs it presents you to get to the dialog in which you tell it to import columns as whatever: general (let Excel decide), text, date, and do not import. Choose Date and make the selection of DMY to import them properly as you desire them to be so you are never presented with the problem at all.
As you might guess, you can use the abbreviated wizard via the "Text to Columns" feature to do the same thing after import when you see they are reversed. Since it is a single column of data, the result will overwrite the original simplifying your work.
Why does this happen at all? Well, the "locale" folks have the idea. When Excel imports numbers that are in a form it recognizes could be a date, it looks to the operating system settings for the selected ways dates are understood. So if your operating system believes a date should be displayed "Month Day, Year" and Excel has a set of data it thinks fits that mold, it will convert them all using it. So you get those Feb 8's rather than Aug 2's.
Interestingly, it does two other things of note:
It looks at 8, count 'em, 8 rows of data to decide the data fits the pattern. Even with 1,000,000 rows to import, it looks at... 8.
Then it does them ALL as if God himself wrote the "8"... and dates like 25/03/2022 get imported as text not a real date, because they (oh, obviously) can't be dates... "25" can't be a month!
It IS possible to change settings (DEEP settings) to make Excel consider X number of rows in a data set before deciding such things. I found them here, on the internet, once upon a time, though I shouldn't like trying to find them again. It will consider up to a million rows in such an import, but... that'd make it pret-ty slow. And that's a million rows for EACH data column. I won't even say that "adds up" - I'll point out it "multiplies up."
Another technique is to add some number of starting rows to force the desired pattern onto the import. I've heard it works in TIME column imports so it ought to in DATE column imports but I've not verified such.
My bet is you will find the use of the "Text to Columns" feature of most use if you can use a hands-on approach - it does require literal action on your part, but is a fast operation. If you will see others using the spreadsheet though... well, you need a formulaic solution or a VBA one (macro with button for them to have some fun clicking as their reward for doing what they were trained to do instead of complaining to the boss you make bad spreadsheets). For a formulaic solution, the above formula is simple.
Last thought though: there's no error-checking and error-overcoming in it. So a date like "25/03/2022" in the data that imported as literal text is a problem. For handling the latter, an up-to-date approach could be:
=IF(TYPE(A1)=1,DATEVALUE(TEXT(A1,"dd/mm/yyyy")),DATE(INDEX(TEXTSPLIT(A1,"/"),1,3),INDEX(TEXTSPLIT(A1,"/"),1,2),INDEX(TEXTSPLIT(A1,"/"),1,1)))
in which the DATE(etc. portion handles finding text of the "25/03/2022" kind. Lots of less up-to-date ways to split the text Excel would have placed in the column, but since demonstrating what to do if it existed was the point, I took the easy way out. (Tried for a simple version but it wouldn't take INDEX(TEXTSPLIT(A1,"/"),1,{3,2,1}) from me for the input parameters to DATE.) TYPE will give a 1 if Excel imported a datum as a date (number), and a 2 if brought in as text. If empty or strange strings could exist, you'll need to deal with what those present you as well.
I recently pulled a huge amount of data into a csv file, as a result a large amount of data is being formatted like this:
xx:xx-xx:xx - 'text'
The problem i'm having is this is all in one cell, I've tried looking online without much luck so basically wanted to know if it's even possible to find the time difference between xx:xx-xx:xx even if they're stored on the same cell? If not, is there a way to split these times into different cells en mass?
edit:
I've managed to remove the text from the cell, I now am left with 1 cell containing ranges similar to:
Please try, formatted as Time:
=MID(A1,7,5)-LEFT(A1,5)
If that does not work then check for leading spaces. Won't suit if times are late/early order, nor if spanning midnight.
Edited so there should be no need to strip out 'text'.
I had a data set of 8 millon rows in a txt file with tab delimited format without quotes.
I had 5 of the 14 columns with date values in dd.MM.yyyy format.
Problem 1
I am trying to import the file. In "Format your colums" step, if I choose the type of that colums as "date", it gives errors and all cells in columns turns "?"
So I selected "polynomial" and planed to convert attribute type to date later.
Problem 2 (the real one)
I imported the data and put "nominal to date" operator. When I run I got error in line 14.899:
Cannot parse date: Unparseable date: "0"
I find the line and I see that columns separated wrong. There was a tab character in a string in the a prior cell. So values moved one cell right. And this row was not the only one that moved.
I want to split the rows that has the values in wrong data type for spesified attributes. So I cant correct them manually.
How can I do that in Rapidminer?
Or any other ideas to figure theese problems out?
so most likely you need to adjust the date formatting in this pull-down menu:
To be honest, I usually just import as polynominal and then convert to date in my process. It's easier and reproducable.
You appear to have a broken input file.
The best solution, obviously, is to fix the process that generates the data. Espace or replace tab characters and format the date in a non-ambiguous format such as the ISO date format.
Assuming that you can't fix the date, you should probably write a robust parser program yourself. A generic parser such as rapidminer's won't be able to fix every problem.
A reporting service generates a csv file and certain columns (oddly enough) have mixed date/time format , some rows contain datetime expressed as m/d/y, others as d.m.y
When applying =TYPE() it will either return 1 or 2 (Excel will recognize either a text or a number (the Excel timestamp))
How can I convert any kind of wrong date-time format into a "normal" format that can be used and ensure some consistency of data?
I am thinking of 2 solutions at this moment :
i should somehow process the odd data with existing excel functions
i should ask the report to be generated correctly from the very beginning and avoid this hassle in the first place
Thanks
Certainly your second option is the way to go in the medium-to-long term. But if you need a solution now, and if you have access to a text editor that supports Perl-compatible regular expressions (like Notepad++, UltraEdit, EditPad Pro etc.), you can use the following regex:
(^|,)([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)(?=,|$)
to search for all dates in the format m/d/y, surrounded by commas (or at the start/end of the line).
Replace that with
\1\3.\2.\4
and you'll get the dates in the format d.m.y.
If you can't get the data changed then you may have to resort to another column that translates the dates: (assumes date you want to change is in A1)
=IF(ISERR(DATEVALUE(A1)),DATE(VALUE(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND(".",A1,4))),VALUE(MID(A1,FIND(".",A1)+1,2)),VALUE(LEFT(A1,FIND(".",A1)-1))),DATEVALUE(A1))
it tests to see if it can read the text as a date, if it fails, then it will chop up the string, and convert it to a date, else it will attempt to read the date directly. Either way, it should convert it to a date you can use
We're exporting our analytics reports in various formats, among them CSV. For some clients this CSV finds it's way into Excel.
Inside the CSV file one of the columns is a Date, for example
"Start Date","Name"
"07-04-2010", "Maxim"
Excel has trouble parsing this date format, obviously depending on the Locale of the user. Is "07" is the day or the month...
Could you recommend some textual format for a Date field that excel will not have trouble parsing? I'm aiming at the most fail safe option possible. I would settle for some escape sequence that will cause excel to avoid parsing the text in the column altogether.
Thanks for helping,
Maxim.
You have two options. Go with the month as a string and the year as 4 digits, or use ISO formatting: yyyy-mm-dd.
If you format your dates as follows in the csv output, Excel will parse the content exactly as a date (other columns for realism only)
43,somestring,="03/03/2003",anotherval
55,anotherstring,="01/02/2004",finalval
so add ="{date}" and it parses as date!