About Zapier Community
New to our Community? Get to know more about our space and how to make the most of your time here.

Code of Conduct Community FAQ's Zapier Common Questions What to Expect

Get Started With Zapier
New to Zapier? We have got you covered with our Zapier 101 Resources.

Zapier Essentials

Get Support
Have a question? Let's get you an answer!

How Do I...? Troubleshooting Code & Webhooks Developer Zone

Other Help Resources
Wait, there's more! Check out these Community sourced spaces for additional resources.

Zapier Help Center Hire an Expert

Zapier Products
Learn more about Zapier's new products.

Zapier Tables Zapier Interfaces

Zapier Reading
All of our best learning resources can be found here.

Featured Articles Show & Tell AI Hub Zapier Tools Hub

Learning Groups
Excited to meet other builders? Check out our interest areas full of doers, dreamers, and in-betweeners.

User Groups

Other Learning Resources
Some of our favorite additional ways to upskill your Zapier knowledge.

Zapier Learn Zapier Blog Zapier Webinars

Product Updates
Check out what is new and upcoming with Zapier with our regular product updates.

Product Updates

Early Access Program
Want to join Early Access? Learn more here.

  • Home
  • Get Help
  • Troubleshooting
  • When MS Excel receives the information, it stores it as a string and not the usual “48587” format it uses to store date data.
Best answer

When MS Excel receives the information, it stores it as a string and not the usual “48587” format it uses to store date data.

  • 30 November 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 127 views
Adeliand
Userlevel 3
Badge

Hello all, 

 

I have a problem sending dates to an Excel spreadsheet, which would later be used as data for a pivot table. 

I have an app that sends infos such as date and time of delivery, and I know how to format this incoming data to something Excel can understand, such as 30/11/2022 (I work from France where date formatting is different).

Problem is, when Excel receives the information, it stores it as a string and not the usual “48587” format it uses to store date data.

It eventually means that my pivot tables don’t work the way I want them to, as I can’t sort anything by dates (Excel has an option to sort by “last month”, “next week”, etc that I want to use). 

 

Bottom point is, Is there a way to make Zapier send dates data in a way Excel would recognize instantly ? like the 45848 or whatever ? 

 

Thanks a lot!

icon

Best answer by Adeliand 30 November 2022, 14:16

View original
This post has been closed for comments. Please create a new post if you need help or have a question about this topic.

4 replies

MohSwellam
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Hi @Adeliand 

 

Yes there is, you can use the Formatter by Zapier and choose the format you want there. You can use the X format if you want. 

Founder of GeekyAir.com
Adeliand
Userlevel 3
Badge

Unfortunately it doesn’t work, because Excel has its own way of storing dates, and doesn’t understand timestamps. 

 

I found a way to work around this, by using the =DATEVALUE() function is my outgoing data. 

 

Instead of feeding Excel with raw dates, I just put the string I get from a formater straight into the formula, like so :

 

Right now it seems to do the trick, but I will have to check tomorrow if this formula returns the first of December instead of January 12th, then it would become a regional formatting problem

Liz_Roberts
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Nice workaround @Adeliand 👏🏽 Curious how the date appeared today, December 1? 

Adeliand
Userlevel 3
Badge

Amazingly, it works!

Terms & Conditions