Forum Discussion
csv
Up until a few weeks ago, I have been downloading a CSV file from a web-site. The file consisted several rows of a DATE field, text field and 2 numeric fields. EG: 08/14/2023,ABCD-1 ,005161,100.00 ...
Do you use a different system date format on the new computer than on the old one?
If you used mm/dd/yyyy on the old computer, 08/14/2023 would be recognized as the 14th of August.
If the new computer uses dd/mm/yyyy, 08/14/2023 is not a valid date, so Excel will import it as text.
- I made a small error in my last replay. More correctly the computer's date format is set to: yyyy-mm-dd.
As well, I tried changing it to: mm/dd/yyyy on my Win-11 computer (then rebooted). I then tried to open my CSV file by double-clicking. Again, that DATE field opened in Excel-365 as TEXT (not as a date). - both my Windows-10 old system and the new Windows-11, have their dates set as yyyy/mm/dd.
- OK... I found a solution (That I do not like).
I live in Canada so I had set my "Preferred languages as English (Canada) first, and English (United States) as second. I set the Country or Region to Canada, and finally the Regional format to English (Canada). THEN, I change all of these things to United States - first, and change the short date to mm/dd/yyyy. THEN, my csv opens with the date as a date (not TEXT). Changing just the short date (and not the others) --- does NOT work.
