from "date" to "text"

[fgg]

Hi there,

I have cells formatted as date (e.g. 11/9/03) and I'd like to change
the format to text. But when I do it, the values change as well (e.g.
"36472"). What can I do to avoid this?

Thanks

 

[Fred Smith]

You can't. Dates, to Excel, are the number of days since Jan 1, 1900. That's
the what you are seeing when you try to change the format to text.

You need to tell us why you want it as text. You have lots of other choices
of formats available.

If you absolutely have to have text, you will need to create a helper cell,
and use a formula like:
=text(a1,"m/d/yy")

Regards,
Fred

 

[ozgrid.com]

Add a ' in front of the date. However, it's never a good idea to convert
dates/numbers to text.

 

[fgg]

You need to tell us why you want it as text. You have lots of other choices

of formats available.

If you absolutely have to have text, you will need to create a helper cell,
and use a formula like:
=text(a1,"m/d/yy")

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm saving this excel file as *.csv and
opening it in a GIS. But the GIS is having problems reading the
columns with dates and times (e.g. 30:26.4). I thought that a format
change could help, but maybe not.

 

[Fred Smith]

Format won't solve your problems. Convert it to text in a different column,
and export that.

Regards,
Fred