Left() When Extracting Dates in Excel/CSV

[H7H12]

Hi there,

Hope you can help me out with the following, it should hopefully be simple and I'm just missing something!

OS: Windows XP
Excel version: 2007

I have an excel worksheet with the following column:

|Date|
|01/01/2012 00:01|

However, for my work, I only need to extract the date, not the time. So, I've been simply using =left(cell,characters) to extract what I need to a new column (called, say 'Edited Date').

This has worked perfectly, up until the file type I download was switched from .xlsx to .csv. Now, when I try and extract just the date using the left() method, it outputs a number that isn't recognisable as a date, but is apparently already formatted as a date. So, to carry on the example...

|Date|
|01/01/2012 00:01|

becomes

|Edited Date|
40909.0006

When I try and use left().

I've already tried saving the csv as an excel workbook, but it still happens even when the csv is resaved as a workbook. Just wondering where I'm going wrong?

 

[VoG]

With a date + time in A1 try

=INT(A1)

and format as Date.

 

[H7H12]

That's awesome - thanks so much, works perfectly!