Excel Date Formatting

Question

I have a large imported csv file containing American Dates in a column. I want to change these dates to UK format (dd/mm/yyyy) using a code. The problem is the US dates are in both "mm/dd/yyyy" and "m/dd/yyyy" format- the latter of which does not respond to any of the "clickable" options in excel- including the "Text to Columns" procedure. Is there a code which when run in the adjacent column will do the conversion?

Answer 1

You can also use the TEXT() function quite easily (Note: source data must be an excel date value)

TEXT(value, format_text)

where value is the reference cell and format_text is how you want to format the text- in your case dd/mm/yyyy.

Assuming:

A1 = 3/17/2013
A2 = 12/27/2013

In B1 & B2 simply input:

B1 = TEXT(A1, "dd/mm/yyyy")
B2 = TEXT(A2, "dd/mm/yyyy")

and the result should be

     A              B
3/17/2013      17/03/2013
12/27/2013     27/12/2013

Hope that helps.

UPDATED SUGGESTION IF WORKING WITH TEXT:

Split the string using mid(), left() and right() functions then check to see if the month mm is 1 or 2 characters long using the LEN() function. Finally concatenatr the string together using the & and / operators.

Try pasting this in B1, it should work fine:

=MID(A1,FIND("/",A1,1)+1,2)&"/"&IF(LEN(LEFT(A1,FIND("/",A1)-1))=1,0&LEFT(A1,FIND("/",A1)-1),LEFT(A1,FIND("/",A1)-1))&"/"&RIGHT(A1,4)

Answer 2

You can use the DATEVALUE function to convert the date strings into Excel data values, and then create a custom date format to display the date values in U.K. format.

Assuming that the first date string is in cell A1, the following function call will turn the string into a date value.

  =DATEVALUE(A1)

You can create the custom format dd/mm/yyyy;@ by right-clicking on the cell, choosing Format Cells, Number, Custom and entering the format in the Type field.

Working with date values instead of date strings will allow you to change the displayed format without having to do string operations to rearrange the date elements. It will also make it possible to do date arithmetic, should that need arise.