Date errors in excel

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

The problem: Excel does not want to recognize dates as dates, even though through «Format cells — Number — Custom» you are explicitly trying to tell it these are dates by «mm/dd/yyyy«. As you know; when excel has recognized something as a date, it further stores this as a number — such as «41004» but displays as date according to format you specify. To add to confusion excel may convert only part of your dates such as 08/04/2009, but leave other e.g. 07/28/2009 unconverted.

Solution: steps 1 and then 2

1) Select the date column. Under Data choose button Text to Columns. On first screen leave radio button on «delimited» and click Next. Unclick any of the delimiter boxes (any boxes blank; no checkmarks) and click Next. Under column data format choose Date and select MDY in the adjacent combo box and click Finish. Now you got date values (i.e. Excel has recognised your values as Date data type), but the formatting is likely still the locale date, not the mm/dd/yyyy you want.

2) To get the desired US date format displayed properly you first need to select the column (if unselected) then under Cell Format — Number choose Date AND select Locale : English (US). This will give you format like «m/d/yy«. Then you can select Custom and there you can either type «mm/dd/yyyy» or choose this from the list of custom strings.

Alternative 0 : use LibreOffice Calc. Upon pasting data from Patrick’s post choose Paste Special (Ctrl+Shift+V) and choose Unformatted Text. This will open «Import Text» dialog box. Character set remains Unicode but for language choose English(USA); you should also check the box «Detect special numbers». Your dates immediately appear in the default US format and are date-sortable. If you wish the special US format MM/DD/YYYY you need to specify this once through «format Cells» — either before or after pasting.

One might say — Excel should have recognised dates as soon as I told it via «Cell Format» and I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately it is only through step 1 from above that I have been able to make Excel recognize these text strings as dates. Obviously if you do this a lot it is pain in the neck and you might put together a visual basic routine that would do this for you at a push of a button. It can be as simple as this VBA code in Excel:

Sub RemoveApostrophe()

For Each CurrentCell In Selection
If CurrentCell.HasFormula = False Then    
CurrentCell.Formula = CurrentCell.Value
End If
Next

End Sub

Alternative 1: Data | Text to Columns

Update on leading apostrophe after pasting: You can see in the formula bar that in the cell where date was not recognised there is a leading apostrophe. That means in the cell formatted as a number (or a date) there is a text string that program thinks — you want to preserve as a text string. You could say — the leading apostrophe prevents the spreadsheet to recognise the number. You need to know to look in formula bar for this — because the spreadsheet simply displays what looks like a left-aligned number. To deal with this, select the column you want to correct, choose in menu Data | Text to Columns and click OK. Sometimes you will be able to specify the data type, but if you have previously set the format of the column to be your particular data type — you will not need it. The command is really meant to split a text column in two or more using a delimiter, but it works like a charm for this problem too. I have tested it in Libreoffice, but there is the same menu item in Excel too.

Alternative 2: Edit Replace in Libreoffice

This is the quickest and best way so far, but that does not work in MsOffice as far as I know. Libreoffice Calc has option to search/replace using Regexps (aka. Regular Expressions) — what you do is find the cell and replace with itself and in the process Calc re-recognises the number as number and gets rid of the leading apostrophe. It works extremely quick. Select your column. Ctrl-H opens find-replace dialogue. Check ‘Current selection’ and ‘Use regular expressions’. In the find box enter ^[0-9] — which means ‘find any cell that has a digit 0 to 9 in its first position’. In the replace box enter & — which for libreoffice means ‘for replacement use string you found in the search box’. Click Replace All — and your values are recognised for numbers that they are. The beauty is — it works on cells that contain only numbers with a leading apostrophe, nothing else — i.e. it will not touch cells that contain apostrophe-a space (or two)-then number, or cells that contain capital O instead of zero or any other anomalies you want to correct by hand.

answered Sep 26, 2014 at 12:49

answered Apr 10, 2017 at 21:49

It seems that Excel does not recognize your dates as dates, it recognizes them text, hence you get the Sort options as A to Z. If you do it correctly, you should get something like this:

Hence, it is important to ensure that Excel recognizes the date. The most simple way to do that, is use the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+3.

Here’s what I did to your data. I simply copied it from your post above and pasted it in excel. Then I applied the shortcut above, and I got the required sort option. Check the image.

I would suspect the issue is Excel not being able to understand the format… Although you select the Date format, it remains as Text.

You can test this easily: When you try to update the dates format, select the column and right click on it and choose format cells (as you already do) but choose the option 2001-03-14 (near bottom of the list). Then review the format of your cells.

I will suspect that only some of the date formats update correctly, indicating that Excel still treating it like a string, not a date (note the different formats in the below screen shot)!

There are work-arounds for this, but, none of them will be automated simply because you’re exporting each time. I would suggest using VBa, where you can simply run a macro which converts from US to UK date format, but, this would mean copying and pasting the VBa into your sheet each time.

Alternatively, you create an Excel that reads the newly created exported Excel sheets (from exchange) and then execute the VBa to update the date format for you. I will assume the Exported Exchange Excel file will always have the same file name/directory and provide a working example:

So, create new Excel sheet, called ImportedData.xlsm (excel enabled). This is the file where we will import the Exported Exchange Excel file into!

Add this VBa to the ImportedData.xlsm file

Sub DoTheCopyBit()

Dim dateCol As String
dateCol = "A"        'UPDATE ME TO THE COLUMN OF THE DATE COLUMN

Dim directory As String, fileName As String, sheet As Worksheet, total As Integer

Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Application.DisplayAlerts = False

directory = "C:UsersDaveDesktop"                   'UPDATE ME
fileName = Dir(directory & "ExportedExcel.xlsx")       'UPDATE ME (this is the Exchange exported file location)

Do While fileName <> ""

'MAKE SURE THE EXPORTED FILE IS OPEN
Workbooks.Open (directory & fileName)

Workbooks(fileName).Worksheets("Sheet1").Copy _

Workbooks(fileName).Close

fileName = Dir()

Loop

Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Application.DisplayAlerts = True

Dim row As Integer
row = 1
Dim i As Integer
Do While (Range(dateCol & row).Value <> "")

     Dim splitty() As String
     splitty = Split(Range(dateCol & row).Value, "/")
     Range(dateCol & row).NumberFormat = "@"
     Range(dateCol & row).Value = splitty(2) + "/" + splitty(0) + "/" + splitty(1)
     Range(dateCol & row).NumberFormat = "yyyy-mm-dd"
     row = row + 1
Loop


End Sub

What I also did was update the date format to yyyy-mm-dd because this way, even if Excel gives you the sort filter A-Z instead of newest values, it still works!

I’m sure the above code has bugs in but I obviously have no idea what type of data you have but I tested it with the a single column of dates (as you have) and it works fine for me!

How do I add VBA in MS Office?

I figured it out!

There is a space at the beginning and at the end of the date.

1. If you use find and replace and press the spacebar, it WILL NOT
   work.
2. You have to click right before the month number, press shift
   and the left arrow to select and copy. Sometimes you need to use the
   mouse to select the space.
3. Then paste this as the space in find and
   replace and all your dates will become dates.
4. If there is space and date Select Data>Go to Data>Text to
   columns>Delimited>Space as separator and then finish.
5. All spaces will be removed.

answered Dec 13, 2016 at 11:25

I tried the various suggestions, but found the easiest solution for me was as follows…

See Images 1 and 2 for the example… (note — some fields were hidden intentionally as they do not contribute to the example). I hope this helps…

1. Field C — a mixed format that drove me absolutely crazy. This is how the data came directly from the database and had no extra spaces or crazy characters. When displaying it as a text for example, the 01/01/2016 displayed as a ‘42504’ type value, intermixed with the 04/15/2006 which showed as is.

2. Field F — where I obtained the length of field C (the LEN formula would be a length of 5 of 10 depending on the date format). The field is General format for simplicity.

3. Field G — obtaining the month component of the mixed date — based on the length result in field F (5 or 10), I either obtain the month from the date value in field C, or obtain the month characters in the string.

4. Field H — obtaining the day component of the mixed date — based on the length result in field F (5 or 10), I either obtain the day from the date value in field C, or obtain the day characters in the string.

I can do this for the year as well, then create a date from the three components that is consistent. Otherwise, I can use the individual day, month, and year values in my analysis.

Image 1: basic spreadsheet showing values and field names

Image 2: spreadsheet showing formulas matching explanation above

I hope this helps.

answered Jan 13, 2017 at 13:02

SHARING A LITTLE LONG BUT MUCH EASIER SOLUTION TO SUBJECT…..
No need to run macros or geeky stuff….simple ms excel formulae and editing.

mixed dates excel snapshot:

• The date is in the mixed format.
• Therefore, to make a symmetrical
  date format, extra columns have been created converting that ‘mixed
  format’ date column to TEXT.
• From that text we have identified the
  positions of «/» and middle text has been extracted determining
  date, month, year using MID formula.
• Those which were originally dates, formula ended with ERROR / #VALUE result. — Finally, from the string we created — we have converted those to dates by DATE formula.
• #VALUE were picked as it is by IFERROR added to DATE formula & the column was formatted as required (here, dd/mmm/yy)

* REFER THE SNAPSHOT OF EXCEL SHEET ABOVE (= mixed dates excel snapshot) *

Select dates and run this code over it..

On Error Resume Next
    For Each xcell In Selection            
        xcell.Value = CDate(xcell.Value)     
    Next xcell                              
End Sub

I use a mac.

Go to excel preferences> Edit> Date options> Automatically convert date system

Also,

Go to Tables & Filters> Group dates when filtering.

The problem probably started when you received a file with a different date system, and that screwed up your excel date function

answered Nov 30, 2017 at 10:36

I usually just create an extra column for sorting or totaling purposes so use year(a1)&if len(month(a1))=1,),"")&month(a1)&day(a1).

That will provide a yyyymmdd result that can be sorted. Using the len(a1) just allows an extra zero to be added for months 1-9.

I have an excel sheet created by a 3rd party program.

One of the columns has dates in this format: «Jan 19, 2015 03:00:00 PM»

I would like these dates to appear in the following format: «19/01/2015»

I have selected the cell or cells, right clicked and selected «Format Cells…», chose «Date» in the category, then chose «14/03/2001» in the type, to no avail, the dates won’t change.

I also tried «Custom» from the category and «dd/mm/yyyy» from the type, again, no changes at all.

The file is not protected, the sheet is editable.

Could someone explain what I could be doing wrong?

Regards
Crouz

asked Feb 14, 2015 at 15:07

DATEVALUE function will help if date is stored as a text as in

=DATEVALUE("Jan 19, 2015 03:00:00 PM")

My solution to a similar problem with Date formatting was solved by:

1. Copying the problem sheet then pasting it into Sheet
   n.
2. Deleting the problem sheet.
3. Renaming Sheet n to the name of the problem sheet.

QED.

The problem sheet contained Date data that I wanted to read as 07/21/2017 that would not display anything other than 42937. The first thing I did was to close Excel and re-launch it. More tries followed. I gave up on my own solutions. I tried a few online suggestions. I then made one more attempt and — Walla — the above three steps fixed the problem. As to why the problem existed? It obviously had something to do with «the» sheet. Go figure!

For me to believe is insufficient for you to know — rodalsa.

answered Dec 6, 2020 at 17:03

With your data in A1, in B1 enter:

=DATEVALUE(MID(A1,1,12))

and format B1 as dd/mm/yyyy For example:

If the cell appears to have a date/time, but it does not respond to format changes, it is probably a Text value rather than a genuine date/time.

answered Feb 14, 2015 at 15:23

answered Dec 27, 2018 at 21:17

Another way to address a few cells in one column that won’t convert is to copy them off to Notepad, then CLEAR ALL (formatting and contents) those cells and paste the cell contents in Notepad back into the same cells.

Then you can set them as Date, or Text or whatever.

Clear Formatting did not work for me. Excel 365, probably version 2019.

answered Jul 14, 2020 at 10:01

Similar way as ron rosefield but a little bit simplified.

=DATE(RIGHT(A1,4),MATCH(MID(A1,4,2),{«01″;»02″;»03″;»04″;»05″;»06″;»07″;»08″;»09″;»10″;»11″;»12»},0),LEFT(A1,2))

answered Apr 13, 2017 at 13:09