Saving to CSV in Excel loses regional date format

Question

I have a .xls I need to convert to .csv

The file contains some date columns. The format on the date is \"*14/03/2001\" which, according to Excel means the date respo

Answer 1

You can save your desired date format from Excel to .csv by following this procedure, hopefully an excel guru can refine further and reduce the number of steps:

1. Create a new column DATE_TMP and set it equal to the =TEXT( oldcolumn, "date-format-arg" ) formula.

For example, in your example if your dates were in column A the value in row 1 for this new column would be:

=TEXT( A1, "dd/mm/yyyy" )

2. Insert a blank column DATE_NEW next to your existing date column.

3. Paste the contents of DATE_TMP into DATE_NEW using the "paste as value" option.

4. Remove DATE_TMP and your existing date column, rename DATE_NEW to your old date column.

5. Save as csv.

Answer 2

If you use a Custom format, rather than one of the pre-selected Date formats, the export to CSV will keep your selected format. Otherwise it defaults back to the US format