Date Values with Excel

[Tim Harvey]

Does anyone know the a way to upload a date value from Excel to TracerPlus?

If I create a Date or DateTime field in TracerPlus and then download this data to an Excel spreadsheet with TP Connect I can set the formatting for the column in Excel to Date or custom formatting like mm/dd/yy h:mm:ss AM/PM and it will be properly displayed in Excel as a date or date/time.
But if I then upload this Excel data back to TracerPlus the date fields all become numbers i.e. 42216.0073173611.
I am assuming this is because Excel stores its date values as a number which is the number of hours since a specific date in time (I don't remember the exact formula) and TracerPlus values are all stored as varchar values.

So is there a way to upload a date value from Excel to TracerPlus and have it be displayed correctly as a date or date/time format in TracerPlus?

 

[Corey Hagewood]

Hi Tim,

Your assumption is correct. This has to do with the way Excel is storing that formatted date value. Try setting the formatting type of the column to be Text. This should keep the date as a string value, and that string value can be sent back to Tracerplus exactly as it is.

Let me know if you have any other questions on this.