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Copy the dates that are in the cells that you want to convert. Copy the text and paste it into Notepad. Return to Excel and pick the cells into which you wish to paste the dates. Go to Home –> Number and pick the Text format with the cells chosen (from the drop down).
Select a blank cell (says cell B2) adjacent to the serial number cell you need to convert to date, then enter formula =TEXT(A2,"m/d/yyyy") into the Formula Bar, and press the Enter key.
The DATEVALUE function in Excel converts a date in the text format to a serial number that Excel recognizes as a date. So, the formula to convert a text value to date is as simple as =DATEVALUE(A1) , where A1 is a cell with a date stored as a text string.
=TEXT(A1,"DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm:ss")
(24 hour time)
=TEXT(A1,"DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm:ss AM/PM")
(standard time)
Here is a VBA approach:
Sub change()
toText Sheets(1).Range("A1:F20")
End Sub
Sub toText(target As Range)
Dim cell As Range
For Each cell In target
cell.Value = cell.Text
cell.NumberFormat = "@"
Next cell
End Sub
If you are looking for a solution without programming, the Question should be moved to SuperUser.
Here's another option. Use Excel's built in 'Text to Columns' wizard. It's found under the Data tab in Excel 2007.
If you have one column selected, the defaults for file type and delimiters should work, then it prompts you to change the data format of the column. Choosing text forces it to text format, to make sure that it's not stored as a date.
In some contexts using a ' character beforehand will work, but if you save to CSV and load again this is impossible.
'01/01/2010 14:30:00
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