Bug: Excel date fields are not "Date" format
Hi there, When exporting, say, the Transaction List as Excel, the date fields are not interpreted by Excel as "Date" format, but as "General", which is effectively "Text" format as far as using t...
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Hey Sean StrataGeek - we're always learning something new from you, so thanks for flagging this.
I played around in Excel on my Mac - both the app and the web version - and I was able to bulk convert the generic text format into true Excel dates.
It works a bit differently across the Excel Mac app and the browser, so your mileage may vary, but here's what I did:
| Step | Mac app | Browser |
| 1 | highlight the date column or cells | highlight the date column or cells |
| 2 | go to Data > Text to Columns | go to Data > Split Text to Columns |
| 3 | click Next, then Next again | click Apply |
| 4 | choose Date and select the matching order (for example DMY) | |
| 5 | click Finish |
After that, the cells should become real Excel dates, and then you can format them however you like and run your before/after date checker formula as normally.
I'll see if anything can be done on our side to render those fields as proper date values from the start, but in the meantime this could be a good workaround.
Let me know how you go!
Thanks Jared,
Yes, I did know how to do that, it's just that that's a pretty blunt force sort of way to have it if any dates are in columns with other sorts of data formats.
Sean
