Dates in different formats to be ordered chronologically

[clairevic]

Hi,

Total excel amateur here.

I am compiling a list of documents and wish to order them in chronological order.

However some of the documents have a single date while others have date ranges. The straight forward dates are fine and ordered correctly however Excel is not recognising the date ranges and just bundles all those with date ranges at the bottom.

For example, where documents have one date such as 1/01/2015, it orders it correctly but where it has a range such as 1/01/2015-1/01/2016, it doesn't recognise the range or anything.

I'm wondering if there is any way for me to fix this? From the research I have done, it appears that I may need to start a new column so I can have a start and end date, so the range is recognised but I would prefer to just have it as one cell for ease.

Thanks and hope you understand what I'm trying to say! All help is appreciated

 

[Gerald Higgins]

Hi, welcome to the board.

I think I understand what you are saying here.

My suggestion would be to clean up your data, so that you don't have date ranges and only have single dates.
Is this an option for you ? I think it could be the cleanest solution.

Alternatively, if the date range entries are always in a consistent format, you could use formulas to split the data up into start and end dates in separate columns.

 

[Special-K99]

If you can provide a list of date examples we can come up with a formula to separate it into two columns