Excel question

[AHiltz]

My boss has a spreadsheet that has data such as 10.28.2006 that is supposed to be a date, but Excel doesn't recognize it as such. Is there an easy way to convert these values over to a recognized format?

[drmcboy]

highlight the cells that have the dates, do a search and replace (Control-H) - replace the dot (.) with a slash (/).

[koolmoe]

<edit> what he said </edit>

My boss has a spreadsheet that has data such as 10.28.2006 that is supposed to be a date, but Excel doesn't recognize it as such. Is there an easy way to convert these values over to a recognized format?

Highlight said cells. Right click on any highlighted cell. Click 'Format Cells'. 'Number' tab. Click 'Date'. Select the format you want the date to be displayed in. Click 'OK'.

[LeFou]

sed -i 's/([\d]{1,2}).([\d]{1,2}).([\d]{4,4})/\1\/\2\/\3/g'

should be fine

[AHiltz]

My boss has a spreadsheet that has data such as 10.28.2006 that is supposed to be a date, but Excel doesn't recognize it as such. Is there an easy way to convert these values over to a recognized format?

Highlight said cells. Right click on any highlighted cell. Click 'Format Cells'. 'Number' tab. Click 'Date'. Select the format you want the date to be displayed in. Click 'OK'.

That doesn't work

[AHiltz]

highlight the cells that have the dates, do a search and replace (Control-H) - replace the dot (.) with a slash (/).

I'll try that

[Staresy]

My boss has a spreadsheet that has data such as 10.28.2006 that is supposed to be a date, but Excel doesn't recognize it as such. Is there an easy way to convert these values over to a recognized format?

Highlight said cells. Right click on any highlighted cell. Click 'Format Cells'. 'Number' tab. Click 'Date'. Select the format you want the date to be displayed in. Click 'OK'.

I think this is right, although you would have to make sure that the format was mm/dd/yyyy, as I think the default would be dd/mm/yyyy

[drmcboy]

no, excel doesn't recognize them as dates with the dot in there. You can format 10.26.2008 as a date, but it's still 10.26.2008.

[salsa4ever]

you can actually change a series of properly formatted data so that it reads 20.10.2006 or 10.20.2006 by going to the "custom" section of the format cells

but I don't think you can do it the other way around