Converting Excel Date Serial Number to Date using Javascript

Question

I have the following javascript code that convert date (string) to the Date Serial Number used in Microsoft Excel:

function JSDateToExcelDate(inDate) {

             


        

Answer 1

// Parses an Excel Date ("serial") into a
// corresponding javascript Date in UTC+0 timezone.
//
// Doesn't account for leap seconds.
// Therefore is not 100% correct.
// But will do, I guess, since we're
// not doing rocket science here.
//
// https://www.pcworld.com/article/3063622/software/mastering-excel-date-time-serial-numbers-networkdays-datevalue-and-more.html
// "If you need to calculate dates in your spreadsheets,
//  Excel uses its own unique system, which it calls Serial Numbers".
//
lib.parseExcelDate = function (excelSerialDate) {
  // "Excel serial date" is just
  // the count of days since `01/01/1900`
  // (seems that it may be even fractional).
  //
  // The count of days elapsed
  // since `01/01/1900` (Excel epoch)
  // till `01/01/1970` (Unix epoch).
  // Accounts for leap years
  // (19 of them, yielding 19 extra days).
  const daysBeforeUnixEpoch = 70 * 365 + 19;

  // An hour, approximately, because a minute
  // may be longer than 60 seconds, see "leap seconds".
  const hour = 60 * 60 * 1000;

  // "In the 1900 system, the serial number 1 represents January 1, 1900, 12:00:00 a.m.
  //  while the number 0 represents the fictitious date January 0, 1900".
  // These extra 12 hours are a hack to make things
  // a little bit less weird when rendering parsed dates.
  // E.g. if a date `Jan 1st, 2017` gets parsed as
  // `Jan 1st, 2017, 00:00 UTC` then when displayed in the US
  // it would show up as `Dec 31st, 2016, 19:00 UTC-05` (Austin, Texas).
  // That would be weird for a website user.
  // Therefore this extra 12-hour padding is added
  // to compensate for the most weird cases like this
  // (doesn't solve all of them, but most of them).
  // And if you ask what about -12/+12 border then
  // the answer is people there are already accustomed
  // to the weird time behaviour when their neighbours
  // may have completely different date than they do.
  //
  // `Math.round()` rounds all time fractions
  // smaller than a millisecond (e.g. nanoseconds)
  // but it's unlikely that an Excel serial date
  // is gonna contain even seconds.
  //
  return new Date(Math.round((excelSerialDate - daysBeforeUnixEpoch) * 24 * hour) + 12 * hour);
};

Answer 2

I made a one-liner for you:

function ExcelDateToJSDate(date) {
  return new Date(Math.round((date - 25569)*86400*1000));
}

Answer 3

So, there I was, having the same problem, then some solutions bumped up but started to have troubles with the Locale, Time Zones, etc, but in the end was able to add the precision needed

toDate(serialDate, time = false) {
    let locale = navigator.language;
    let offset = new Date(0).getTimezoneOffset();
    let date = new Date(0, 0, serialDate, 0, -offset, 0);
    if (time) {
        return serialDate.toLocaleTimeString(locale)
    }
    return serialDate.toLocaleDateString(locale)
}

The function's 'time' argument chooses between displaying the entire date or just the date's time