I have an excel sheet with date columns in the format yyyy-mm-dd
When I export this file to csv format the date format (with excel or openoffice) has been changed to mm/dd/yyyy
Aside from the fact that mm/dd/yyyy doesn’t make any sense to me, is there a way I can prevent excel or openoffice from converting the dates from yyyy-mm-dd to mm/dd/yyyy when I export to csv format?
I need to import the csv file into a mysql database.
Well, I couldn’t find any options in excel or openoffice to preserve the date format when converting to csv.
However I did already solve my problem by copying the dates from the excel sheet to notepad and then from notepad to the csv file. 
Originally posted by jamesbond
[B]I have an excel sheet with date columns in the format yyyy-mm-dd
When I export this file to csv format the date format (with excel or openoffice) has been changed to mm/dd/yyyy
Aside from the fact that mm/dd/yyyy doesn’t make any sense to me, is there a way I can prevent excel or openoffice from converting the dates from yyyy-mm-dd to mm/dd/yyyy when I export to csv format?
I need to import the csv file into a mysql database. [/B]
I created a simple two-column, four-row Excel 97 spreadsheet that looked like
One 2002-08-27
Two 2002-08-28
Three 2002-08-29
Four 2002-08-30
Five 2002-08-31
The date field I set the format to “yyyy-mm-dd” by right clicking the range, selecting format, selecting custom and entering the format in the field. When I did a save as to CSV, this was the result:
One,2002-08-27
Two,2002-08-28
Three,2002-08-29
Four,2002-08-30
Five,2002-08-31
The date format was preserved, so if you’re setting the date format of the field, I’m not sure where you’re problem lies.
The date format was preserved, so if you’re setting the date format of the field, I’m not sure where you’re problem lies.
Neither do I
The date format was set to YYYY-MM-DD.
I didn’t try it with Excel 97, I only tried it with Excel 2000 and the spreadsheet software in Openoffice.
Maybe Excel 97 behaves differently, or it might have to do with settings in Windows.
A quick search in google showed I am not the only one who encountered this ‘issue’.
Ahh, could be version-specific. I haven’t tried Open Office yet, although a friend did download it for me. I’m going to try it on my Linux box. I’ve heard conflicting things about how the windows version co-exists with MS Office and I’d rather not take the chance of messing something up. What’s your experience been?
If Open Office is having an issue with this, it might be worth submitting a bug report at openoffice.org. Just a thot.