Command line switches - possible

[Guest]

I get a file exported from an AS400 into excel, but it exports as excel 2.1,
and all the dates come over as text, and I can't convert. I have to save as
a tab delimited file, then import to excel (2003), which corrects the problem.

Is there a command line excel function to open a .txt file and then save as
excel without haveing to manually launch the application?

 

[Guest]

Well, it looks like a date, and there is no other characeters, but its not
recgnoized as a date. It's left justified, and when sorting, it sorts as
text - 01/01/07 before 03/03/06. and selected the cells and setting format
as text has no effect.

 

[David Biddulph]

Two options worth trying:
Copy a blank cell, then select your cells & edit/ paste special/ add.
or
Select your column of data, then Data/ Text to columns/ Next/ Next/ Column
date format: DMY or MDY as appropriate to your input data/ Finish.