I have a spreadsheet which is a report from an external supplier. The date columns are formatted completely different from how a little acccess database works, so i decided to record a macro in excel to alter the 3 columns to a dd/mm/yyyy format (im uk btw). This all works great and the column isshowing as above and is listed as a 'DATE' format also.
Now i use access to link to this excel sheet by means of a linked table, but i noticed that any queries that i wish to filter on those fields in the form of a where clause, it does not pull in the expected result IE it pulls all dates and not the ones between what i asked for in the queryalmost as if it is not recognizing them as dates see the where clause below
WHERE LatestGamma.ConfirmedPortingDate Between [Please Provide 1st Date (dd/mm/yyyy)] And [Please Provide 2nd Date (dd/mm/yyyy)];
I also tested it by using actual dates in the between cluase and it still appears to ignore it.
When i look at the properties of linked table for those columns, it shows that the fields are: dd/mm/yyyy;# but are showing as text??
When i look at the excel macro to see what code the macro used for changing the date format of the columns i see:
Columns("F:H").Select
Selection.NumberFormat = "dd/mm/yyyy;#"
I have another excel sheet that is used as a linked table and date columns are working fine and show as date/time and not Text. Its almost as if excel is putting some meta data into the columns that is making access interprate them as text (even though they are formatted as date)
Im stuck her some help/advise would be great
Its hard to tell without looking at the file, but it seems the main culprit is the excel macro which is not converting the string to date format correctly. You can try converting string into date format by using something like this in excel VBA
Sub convert()
Dim str1 As String
str1 = Range("f6").Value
startdate = CDate(str1)
End Sub
You probably will have to loop thru all the cells to convert the string (text) into date format.
Sorted it in the end. It was more or less what i was thinking IE the column although was showing as a Date type seemed to be storing it as some sort of text. Anyway the way round it was to use the text to columns button and force it to be a date in DMY format.
Once i had tried it i then recorded the actions as a macro and copied the resulting code to my main macro at the end, bingo ! Access now sees it as a date and not text.
Not sure if it is a bug or not but Excel can be a real pain sometimes especially with phone numbers, having to store them as a data type text to keep the leading zero and then immediately converting them to General to allow vlookups etc. I guess that is the same sort of thinkg going on above showing as a date yet actually having like a suedo text meta thing going on...
Related
long time viewer, first time poster.
The issue I am struggling with relates to how my timestamp data appears in excel once I've run my code in snowflake and exported it to CSV. Unfortunately at the moment I am required to double click on these timestamp cells, once in exported into excel, for the true format (how it appears in results in snowflake) to appear.
There is a manual workaround to amend once the data is in excel, however I am automating this report for a client and therefore it must be presented correctly for them prior to the export.
As it stands (see below) the timestamp begins with YYYY-MM-DD and I have been asked to flip this firstly, to begin with DD. I thought that given I need to reformat the current timestamp, I may as well set it up correctly so the timestamp perhaps comes out as text, within the csv export? (from what I have read in other forums if you convert to text it is displayed in excel exactly how it appears in snowflake).
image.png
As you can see, I continue to get the "Cant Parse" error. The example timestamp given, is row 1 of the 'QuoteDate' variable.
The second part of the issue (or really the primary part of the issue) is how the timestamp completely changes format when exported (CSV) to excel. In the screen shot below I have double clicked the first 3 rows, leaving row 4 selected in order to show you all the error - which is the formula bar displays the correct format but the cell itself does not.
image.png
I hope this all makes sense and would love any assistance on how to amend this timestamp issue to run the code correctly, and present my client with a properly formatted timestamp within their extract.
Thank you :)enter image description here
For changing format
SELECT to_char ( to_timestamp ('2019-01-02 09:36:22.507' , 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF') , 'DD-MM-YYYY HH24:MI:SS.FF') AS TS
Timestamp/dates are stored as NUMBER in database, you need to convert in required format for correct display.
to_timestamp --> Converts an input expression into the corresponding timestamp. This expects the input to be in the format provided as second argument.
to_char --> Converts the input expression to a string format.
For preserving data format while converting from csv to excel check Saving to CSV in Excel loses regional date format
I'm experiencing an issue where when I import using SQL import, or ETL job, a CSV Excel type file into SQL that the dates are being converted or altered to something else.
I'm trying to ID a pattern but for example here are two date samples. before and after:
Before After
======= =======
30/01/2015 20/01/1930
11/09/2015 20/09/2011
Seems like the day number is being used to replace the year portion, and in first case century reverts to 19, and the original century portion is, in some cases, overwriting the day, if that makes sense?
I can't see why it would do this, none of the other files I had done this, and they were all Excel CSV files. They were transferred the same way to the same data mart from the same file location.
It's scary to think one file can suddenly do this with no error being raised, and just lucky it was spotted in the end reports.
Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Andrew
Depends on the SQL dialect you are using. For example, Mysql only accepts dates in YYYY-MM-DD format.
The Date format in excel is 06/09/2015.
To make sure everything is okay, just explicitly set the Date format in Excel.
In order to change the date format in excel: right click on the top cell. Choose format cells from the drop down list. change the local to something like 'Afrikans'. Choose the format that looks like 2001-03-14. Use the top cell to fill down. Then save the document.
I am trying to export html data into excel but I am facing problem with date values as:
I am expecting
<pre>"<tr><td style='mso-number-format:d\-mmm\-yyyy' >Mar-21-2014</td></tr>"</pre>
to be 21- Mar-2014
but when I open excel I found it Mar-21-2014 (without change)!!
why does this happen ??
Excel does not recognise this as a date, probably because your regional settings have DMY order and the text is in MDY order.
After importing the text into Excel, select the column, then click Data > Text To Columns > Next > Next
Now you are in Step 3 of the Text To Columns wizard. Click the Date radio button and in the drop-down next to it select MDY (i.e. the order in the imported text). Then click Finish and all text values will be real dates in your regional setting date order.
Edit after comment:
The mso-number-format does not look quite right. I'm not too familiar with it, but as far as I know the format itself must be in quotes. See this other Stackoverflow thread for some scenarios
Even if your style tag syntax was correct, you must have the unformatted date in a format that your Excel will normally recognize as a date. If Excel does not recognize it as a date, it will consider the value as text and you cannot format text into a date. You need to start with a date.
This is specifically for MS-Access Web Databases (requires Sharepoint hosting) which has many limitations compared to their client counterparts, like no VBA, instead you get form macros and data macros to manage data.
I've run into a weird bug on one of my applications. I have a query used to check stock levels against a "minimum stock level" also saved in the table. The query is pretty intense and there are over 4,000 records now to check against. These querys normally take about 75s. So I have made a little label that gets updated every time the form is loaded showing the time and date the query was last run, and the duration in seconds it took. (so users can see how fresh the data is and decide if it needs to be run again)
Now, the weird thing is it works fine in my Access client, but when I sync my changes to the server and try it in a web browser I get a "type mismatch" error. A small table is used to store the start and end times whenever the query is run, that's how I get the timestamp data. These fields are in a "Date/Time" format, obviously. But it seems the problem here is changing the date format to a string format so it can be put in a label on the form. The Access client seems perfectly capable of doing this, while the web client stumbles and falls.
My problem is, how do I change data in a date/time format to a string format in a Web database? I can't figure out how to do this. The tools are so limited. I may have to end up answering my own question here but I'm posting this for others just in case.
To return a value from a data macro as string, you have to format the internal date/time format as a string. In Access an internal date/time value is a double number with the integer part as number of days since 1900, and the “decimal” time part is a fraction of 24 hours. Unfortunately if you simply wrap the date/time in the str$() function we had for 20+ years, then you get something JUST like if you type this into the debug window:
? cdbl(now())
41955.5478587963
The solution is to simply pull out each part. And “nice” is while in few cases a data macro will cast the data type, it does in this case and thus the STR$() command is not required.
The expression you thus can use is this:
Month([d]) & "/" & Day([d]) & " Time = " & Hour([d]) & ":" & Minute([d])
So say to pluck out the VERY LAST start time column from say a invoice table, since we don’t have a dmax(), then we simply sort the table in the order we want and pull out the first row.
Our data macro will thus look like:
Note how in above I simply typed in the SQL and SET the order on the date/time column. I want the MOST recent invoice start date and time. For those new to SQL, then I suggest you build a query in the query builder and specify a query in above lookup feature, since many are not "comfortable" typing in free hand SQL as I did above.
Now, in your browser side (UI) macro, you can use this code:
The above returns a formatted string that you can stuff into a text box, or as per above code change the caption of a label.
Unfortunately with silly problems like this, it becomes a path-of-least resistance thing.
Since my intended result was simply to get "a timedatestamp from a table to show up on a form (so users could see when a query was last run)", this became redesigning my form in Access to be a text field instead of a label. Text fields can be adjusted to accept "Time/Date" formats, so this is exactly what I did, it now pulls the timestamp data directly from the last record of the table and requires no extra formatting to appear in the web browser. I redesigned the text field to appear and function more like a label, and my desired function was achieved.
However, since my question specifically asks, "how do you change a time/date format into a string format in a Web db?", I will leave it here in case someone actually does solve it.
An Access DB imports a fixed width text file; one column is mostly dates.
When the date is not available, the file's creator actually uses the string "Null"
Access puts the row in the table with that field actually null.
But, when the files started coming with different field widths, I copied the DB, tweaked the starting/width values in the input spec, and imported. NOW, all the rows with null get logging in (table)_import_errors as an error converting text to date.
I have found no setting (not that I changed any) to explain it. One difference is that although both DBs are in Access 2000 format, the original is on a machine that still has Access 2000, while the new one is being handled by Access 2003.
Is that a behavior change in the Access version? Is pre-processing the file the only solution?
Thanks, David. That's what I would have done (except for the Excel part) if it had not fixed itself. I posted that, but apparently someone didn't like the public admission that Access has bugs.
The only thing that changed was that two other columns in the fixed width plain text input was wider. Yet Access "decided" to discard the whole row instead of just the date field for three consecutive attempts. The fourth time, it still reported it as an error but imported the rest of the row.
So, when Access misbehaves for no good reason, try again a time or two, then try explicitly coding the conversion from text.
Two possibilities:
Use a buffer field or buffer table that imports the date field into a text field. Then you can process that into the appropriate values in the final destination field.
Use a SQL import instead of DoCmd.TransferText. What you do in that case is use a connect string in the FROM clause so you can then process the date field in your SELECT:
SELECT Sheet1.FirstField, Replace(Sheet2.DateField, "NULL", Null) As DateField
FROM Sheet1 IN 'C:\Import\Spreadsheet.xls'[Excel 5.0;HDR=YES;IMEX=1;];
Convert that into an INSERT query and you're golden.