Crazy Date Formatting????

[TroyB728]

Hi,

I'm having some issues with date formats from a workbook downloaded from a Govt/County site.

The date as downloaded shows as two different date formats inside one column:

03/17/2016 02:22:00 PM - formatted as General, and

2/09/16 13:29 - formatted as Custom (d/mm/yy h:mm)

The issue is that I want to change the formatting to read "14 March 2019" (or similar - but must have the month in letters to fit with the other worksheets I use). I've tried changing the whole column to one of the date formats available, but none of the cell info changes.

Inside the Format window (Protection tab), the cells are locked, but unlocking them does nothing. I've also tried using the custom format option to write my own formats but again, nothing seems to be working.

Any idea's gratefully received.

 

[AlphaFrog]

When you imported the data, the dates were seen by Excel as text and not serial dates. A simple way to coerce the text-dates into serial dates is to select the date column and simply do a Replace (Ctrl+H) text.

Replace a / character with a / character. It may seem silly, but it coercese the text-dates into serial dates. Then you can change the date format.

 

[TroyB728]

AlphaFrog - I'll give that a go first thing in the morning and report back - many thanks.

 

[TroyB728]

Hi AlphFrog - OK I see where you're going with this, unfortunately that's not going to work - the database has around 45,000 rows and 4 columns which need to be correctly formatted.

 

[AlphaFrog]

Select the 4 columns
Replace (Ctrl+H) the / with a / to convert the dates en masse
Format them to suit