Making two different date formats compatible - help requested plea

[Guest]

I've got a spreadsheet in which, up to now, one column has the following
format for the date/time (in a single column): Nov-24-05 06:51:49 PST.
(It's a spreadsheet of EBay charges, previously copied and pasted from my
EBay 'Account Status' page). I've slipped up and failed to download the data
for ages, so for all of last year and part of 2005, I'll have to copy and
paste the data in from the invoices instead, but these have the following
format in that column: Nov 26 06:08:05. Of course, every time I paste this
data in, Excel treats it (in this particular example) as the 1st of November
2026. I'd be really grrateful for some suggestions on the quickest way to
change the format of the incoming data so that it's compatible with the data
in the existing spreadsheet...

 

[David Biddulph]

If you put the year you want to use in B1, then use the formula
=DATE(B$1,MONTH(A1),YEAR(A1)-2000)+MOD(A1,1)

 

[Guest]

If you format A1 as Text and paste in:

Nov 26 06:08:05

Then
=DATE(2000+RIGHT(A1,2),MONTH(1*A1),DAY(1*A1))
will display
11/26/2005
or any other date format you apply.

 

[Guest]

Great, thanks.

If you put the year you want to use in B1, then use the formula
=DATE(B$1,MONTH(A1),YEAR(A1)-2000)+MOD(A1,1)

 

[Guest]

I've copied that formula into B1, is that correct? Maybe not, because it
doesn't return 11/26/2005, it returns 01/11/2005. It's corrected the year
but not the day of the month. How would I change it for other years?

 

[Guest]

I can't reproduce what you are seeing:

On my computer, A1 has: Nov 26 06:08:05 as Text
B1 has: =DATE(2000+RIGHT(A1,2),MONTH(1*A1),DAY(1*A1))
B1 displays: 11/26/2005
formatted as mm/dd/yyy

 

[Guest]

Sorry, but I can't reproduce what you are seeing, either. I've checked and
re-checked the entries, started from scratch and done it all again, but I've
still got 11/01/2005 resulting from the formula in B1. I wish I could show
you a screendump to prove it!

 

[Guest]

The only way I can reproduce what you are seeing is to use:
=DATE(2000+RIGHT(A1,2),MONTH(1*A1),DAY(1))
instead of
=DATE(2000+RIGHT(A1,2),MONTH(1*A1),DAY(1*A1))

Perhaps copy/paste right from my posting.... However, do not fret over it.
Just use David's formula.

 

[Guest]

I've definitely got =DATE(2000+RIGHT(A1,2),MONTH(1*A1),DAY(1*A1)) in there...
It's weird, but I don't know the function we are using well enough to figure
it out...

The cells that I've now re-formatted using David's formula now don't sort
properly with the original ones. I think it's because the 'original' cells
have 'PST' at the end, whereas the 'introduced/reformatted' cells don't. Any
ideas how I can get round that? I tried using 'concatenate' to add a space
then 'PST' to the new cells, once they had the correct format for the date,
but doing this messed up the date format again. I don't really want to strip
out the 'PST' bit from all the others, you never know when you're going to
need an element of data once you've deleted it... I'll also post this under
David's reply in case he's only monitoring replies to his thread. Thanks for
your help.

 

[Guest]

David - The cells that I've now re-formatted using your suggested formula now
don't sort properly with the original ones. I think it's because the
'original' cells have 'PST' at the end, whereas the 'introduced/reformatted'
cells don't. Any ideas how I can get round that? I tried using 'concatenate'
to add a space then 'PST' to the new cells, once they had the correct format
for the date, but doing this messed up the date format again. I don't really
want to strip out the 'PST' bit from all the others, you never know when
you're going to need an element of data once you've deleted it... Thanks
for your help.

 

[Guest]

hello browniebodrum, Im assuming the "dates" you have with PST at the end
are, in fact, text. Try modifying David's formula thus

=TEXT(DATE(B$1,MONTH(A1),YEAR(A1)-2000)+MOD(A1,1),"mmm-dd-yy hh:mm:ss PST")

btw, Gary''s student's formula may not work for you because of your regional
settings. If you have US regional settings, i.e. your default date format is
m/d/yy, then that suggestion should work, however if you have a different
date setting UK or Oz for example, it probably won't.....

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the input, daddylonglegs Well, I tried what you suggested and
this is what happened:

The four original values in the html file are:
Nov 14 07:27:03
Nov 15 04:30:52
Nov 15 04:49:31
Nov 16 08:17:28

When I first paste them into Excel (in cells A1 - A4) they become :

01/11/2014 07:27
01/11/2015 04:30
01/11/2015 04:49
01/11/2016 08:17

'2005' is in B1 (not in quotes, obviously) and I've put your suggested
revised formula in C1 then copied it down through to C4.

The entries then become:

Nov-14-05 07:27:03 P3T
Nov-15-05 04:30:52 P52T
Nov-15-05 04:49:31 P31T
Nov-16-05 08:17:28 P28T

Over to you...! ;-)

browniebodrum

 

[Guest]

Hi again David

I've now found that it doesn't seem to work for all dates...

Mar 31 09:01:21 in the original file becomes 01/03/1931 09:01:21 when it's
pasted into Excel, but when I apply your formula using 2006 as the required
year, it becomes 21/12/2005 09:01:21. Can you help me further? Am I doing
something wrong?

 

[David Biddulph]

Now I realise why that's going wrong. The default in Windows Regional
Options is to treat a 2 digit date as between 1930 and 2029.
Try
=DATE(B$1,MONTH(A1),MOD(YEAR(A1),100))+MOD(A1,1)

 

[David Biddulph]

You could either format the cells with custom format
mmm-dd-yy hh:mm:ss" PST"
or use the formula (modified as a result of your other post)
=TEXT(DATE(B$1,MONTH(A1),MOD(YEAR(A1),100))+MOD(A1,1),"mmm-dd-yy hh:mm:ss""
PST""")
The former solution would leave the cells as date/ time so they can have
further arithmetic performed on the resuls if necessary. The latter would
leave the cells as text, which might be the format of your earlier data if
you wanted to perform consistent operations on both.