years before 1900

[Guest]

I have a beautifull dataset with data as far back as 1881, only excel does
not allow me to analyse them, since he doesn't recognize dates in 1881 as a
date-format. How can I solve this problem and analyse my dataset?

 

[Steve Dalton]

Hi Sandra, this isn't really the right group for this question but...

Is the numerical value of the dates important to you? What kind of analysis
are you trying to undertake?

Possible solutions might be to shift all the dates by a century. This will
not break any leap year logic (within the range of then till now), but would
break day-of-week logic but by a constant offset.

Another possiblity would be to create custom function (in VB or C/C++) which
define and operate on a data structure that supports the dates (VB already
supports earlier dates than VB using negative serial numbers). You would
need a custom functions to display and convert formatted dates.

Another posibility is to represent your dates on the worksheet in 3
columns - not as convenient, but still workable.

Regards

Steve Dalton