I wonder if anyone can give me some guidance concerning dates.
I am working on this form that contains a date in a textbox and spinbutton that adds/subtracts a day from this date.
In my system, the current date format is dd/mm/yyyy. But I noticed that if user has another format, the spin button will not work properly.
My questions
Is there any windows api that gets user`s system date format? What about a windows api that changes this format?
What is the best way to work on a solution for dates (I have been having lots of troubles when it comes to dates, not just in this application)
Any advices regarding dates at different systems will be appreciated.
Thank you all
If you are using macro,
Use "Cdate" to convert values to date. it will convert different date formats into similar date format.
It can be used for comparing two different format dates
For Example.
Function MyDate(rng As String)
MyDate = CDate(rng)
End Function
In excel formula, You can use "Datevalue" formula to convert different date formats to similar date format.
Use the below link to read it more
http://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/1143-excel-convert-number-to-date.html
Related
I have created a database to store genealogical records. I have created a tabular form to display records which include a date text box, however I am struggling to display the date text boxes with the formatting different on each row. The different formats I require are "dd/mm/yyyy" where a full date is known, "yyyy" where the year only is known, and the text box to be left blank if the date is unknown. The table the form is aligned to has a field to indicate whether the date is a full date, year only, or no date - field values "fd", "yo" and "nd" so easy to test the format required for each row.
I cannot see how this is possible using the Conditional Format option.
I am happy to use VBA but have struggled with this. I am new to Access and new to VBA but have a technical background (coding in C++ and Java) and VBA currently looks alien to me - but willing to get into it.
Any pointers please will be much appreciated.
Always store dates as DateTime as it can be stored as Null for unknown.
Then, have a Boolean field, YearOnly, to mark values where only the year is known; store the year with any date of the year, like 2020-01-01.
Now, use a query like this:
SELECT
ID,
[Date],
YearOnly,
Format([Date],"yyyy" & IIf(Not [YearOnly],"-mm-dd")) AS DisplayDate
FROM
YourTable;
[Solved] Thank you Kostas K and Gustav, I have implemented the query you suggest, which took me a while to figure out, but I have it now working in my tabular form. My problem was I was trying to achieve this using VBA on loading the form. VBA wise I am a complete novice.
Thanks Bob H
I really need help on this. I've been looking for an answer for a LONG time but couldn't find it.
In my work, I need to sort a table on Excel using the date present on every line. The problem is that the spreadsheet I use have different layouts of dates as seen below.
2/13/2017 4:43:02 AM (M/DD/YYYY)
02/11/2017 05:05 (DD/MM/YYYY)
I can't sort it this way because it always read wrongly. What I need to do is to split cells and then concatenate them but this is causing a lot of trouble.
Could you help me check if there's any way to do it automatically, using a macro, or at least using just a formula?
This is happening because the output date you got is in text format, not in date format. Here is the trick to resolve your case to get the output in mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm format. You can change the format to your desired one.
If text date is in A column, then formula is -
=DATE(MID(A3,SEARCH("/",$A3,SEARCH("/",$A3,1)+1)+1,4),LEFT(A3,SEARCH("/",A3,1)-1),MID($A3,SEARCH("/",$A3,1)+1,SEARCH("/",$A3,SEARCH("/",$A3,1)+1)-SEARCH("/",$A3,1)-1))+TIME(HOUR(RIGHT(A3,LEN(A3)-SEARCH(" ",A3,1))),MINUTE(RIGHT(A3,LEN(A3)-SEARCH(" ",A3,1))),SECOND(RIGHT(A3,LEN(A3)-SEARCH(" ",A3,1))))
Hope this helps. Rate if satisfied. :)
I have an input spreadsheet that needs to get sorted by date. The current format of the date is in the UK format (dd/mm/yyyy) but I need it in yyyy-mm-dd (actually I don't, I just need to sort it and that format is the most foolproof way of sorting). This all needs to be done in VBA as it's part of a bigger project that allows a bunch of data collation at once. The other problem is that the input sheet can be quite large (150,000+ rows). So, while I could parse through each row of data and change it around to the way I need, this would be horrifically slow and is NOT an option.
Currently I'm using this bit of code to format the date to yyyy-mm-dd:
inputGADRSheet.Columns(7).NumberFormat = "yyyy-mm-dd"
But, Excel outsmarts me and assumes that the date format of the column is originally in the US format (mm/dd/yyyy) which messes everything up and half of the values in the column don't meet that requirement (days above the 12th) so they don't get formatted at all. Is there any way to tell Excel what format the current data is in? That way it won't just assume that it's in the US date format...
Is the solution to change my Excel region to the UK. I assume this could be done using VBA, but it seems risky...
If your data is already in an Excel column, you can't reinterpret the values: Excel date values are (internally) number, 1 representing 1900-01-01. After the data has been (mis-)interpreted by Excel there's no way back.
The question is: Where do you get the input data sheet from? If the dates are entered correctly, reformatting is possible without any problem and does not affect sorting (which depends only on the numeric value of the date). If your data comes from a text file (probably .csv-kind), be sure to read ii as text and use Excel worksheet functions or VBA to interpret the values.
Currently im facing issue that troubles me a lot. I hope that somebody could help me out. I work for big company where are both Office 2007 (32bit) and Office 2010 (64 bit) used. Writing macros to be compatibile through whole company was hard task for me (I've never programmed in VBA before - actually this forum helped me a lot). My task is to maintain one big table in shared Excel sheet. There are several macros and several userforms. Now i will decsribe the problem briefly:
Sheet contains two columns with date format (start date and close date). Both values are imported to column form userform's textboxes (commandbutton lunches MsCal -exported to class- which fills those textboxes with date). What I simply need is to have date format as mm/dd/yyyy in both columns in order to perform filtering and other operations. When this values are updated by worker that uses different localization than English U.S. date is entered as dd.mm.yyyy. Thats make proper filtering based on date impossible. I tried to alter formating by:
UserForm1.TextBox10.Value = Format(Calendar1.Value, "mm/dd/yyyy")
but this piece of code misbehave somehow. On some machines it works, on some of them it is not working. And thats what is giving me headache. How should i proceed now? Is there a way to force excel to use same date format in sheet and ignore localization settings in Windows? Employees dont want to change localization to English U.S. because they are either used to their format, or need it for other applications. Is there a way to temporarily change localization only when this sheet opens?
Any advice will be apreciated.
Thanks in Advance
Peter
The best you can do is NEVER transform a date variable into Text.
Internally for excel a date is just a consecutive number (Left from the decimal separator are days and right from the decimal separator are hours). So, for example, the 10th of June 2012, for excel is 41188. This date value is independent of the date format set on your computer.
Now when it comes to represent dates (for humans to visualize) Excel will format this internal value into a String with the format set in your computer. So, for example if you have US date format in your computer, the date 41188 will be formated as 6/10/2012.
The big challenge with dates is to input the date in the correct format. When you input a Date as a string ("6/10/2012") then Excel will interpret it depending on the date format set on your computer. If you have US format, then it will thake the first cypher as month, the second as day and the last as the year. If you have a German format, it will read the first as day, the next as month and the last as year. So, the same input ("6/10/2012") for a US Format Excel will read 10th of june as for a German format Excel will read 6th of Oktober.
In your case, you should NOT format the date inside the Textbox10. For a US format Excel there is no problem, but if you have another date format, where the first cypher is the day instead of the month, you will get the wrong values:
Check this example. User inputs 10th of June in a German format Excel (dd.mm.yyyy)
Calendar1.Value retrieves a date value (41188)
Format(Calendar1.Value, "mm/dd/yyyy") transforms the date value into a string "06/10/2012"
When using the formated date (STRING), Excel will have to interpret what date it is. Because the computer date format is German, it will read Day:06, Month:10, Year:2012. You will be using day 41070 instead of 41188
If Calendar1.Value retrieves a Date variable and you give this date variable into a Date formated column, you will allways get the correct dale in your column and you will be able to filter and sort dates correctly regardless of the date format set inside the Column cells or the format set in the users computer.
Now, in your case, the best would be to assign directly the Calendar1.Value to the required cell. Something like:
ThisworkBook.WorkSheets("Sheet1").Range("C3").Value= Calendar1.Value
You can still asign Calendar1.Value into the TextBox10 for the user to see his selection, but disable the TextBox10 so that the only edit option is the calendar control. And when working with the date, istead of thaking it from the TextBox10, taking it directly from the Calendar1.Value .
If you still need to show the selected value from Calendar1 into a textBox then do NOT format the date in the Textbox. Instead, use:
UserForm1.TextBox10.Value = Cstr(Calendar1.Value)
This way, the user will see the date in the dateformat that he has set in his computer and to which he is used to.
One solution is to not use the date number format but rather only use the custom format for all your cell dates where you specify "mm/dd/yyyy" as the formatting string. However, in my experience, if your computer's regional settings are set to use "mm/dd/yyyy" then if you try make a custom cell formatting with this same string excel will keep as a dater linked to the computer setting so that doesn't help you. The way I worked around this was to change the date format on my computer, then format the cells as custom "mm/dd/yyyy" and save (and then turn your computer's settings back to how they were.) Now even though excel still claims they are date cells, you'll see that changing the settings on your computer doesn't change the value in the cell.
I guess another way is to always have a cell next to your date cell that calls the TEXT function. So if you have a date in A1 then in another cell =TEXT(A1, "mm/dd/yyyy") and only refer to this new cell. But that could make your spread sheet very messy.
I guess the best solution is to just get you IT dept to set every one in the company's date settings to use the same formats.
Some background: For a project I'm working on (building an XML DOM from a given excel spreadsheet of customer data), I need to be able to read the contents of a cell with a datetime in it. The cell in question contains "7/22/2011 0:00," and when I right-click->format cells, it tells me the category is "Custom" (not in the standard date category), and of type "m/d/yyyy h:mm." Yet when I select the cell, the formula pane displays it as "7/22/2011 12:00:00AM." So all three of these attempts to categorize the datatypes don't match up.
The problem: When I display the cell contents using ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Cells(x,y) in a MsgBox for debugging purposes, it only shows 7/22/2011 (cutting off the time). It can't be the space in between the date and time that throws it off, as I am successfully reading cells with spaces in them elsewhere in the spreadsheet.
Can anyone tell me why this is happening, or point me in the right direction for a VBA/Excel method that doesn't do this weird cropping thing that Sheet.Cells(x,y) is doing? Thanks. If only I had a penny for every time datetime datatypes caused problems for me..
Internally, Excel stores dates as numbers. It doesn't implement a date type. The number is the number of days since some point in the past (1900 or 1904, depending on the operation system, with some mistakes built-in regarding leap years). Time is represented as the fractional part of the number.
To make it look like a date to the user, you have to assign the cell a date format. Then the number is displayed as a date in the cell. (Excel assigns a date format automatically if you enter somethings that looks like a date to Excel.)
When you use ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Cells(x,y), you create a Range object and call its default property, which is Value. Value has a lot of magic built-in. In your case, it looks at the cell format and - seeing a date format - in converts the internally stored number into a Variant of subtype date. When you display it using a message box, the next trick happens. If the time is 0:00, the date is converted to a string without time. If the time were different from 0:00, it would be converted to a string with date and time. The date format is taken from your user's settings. Its independent of the date format you have assigned to the Excel cell.
If you use Value2 instead of Value (e.g. by using a messag box to display ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Cells(x,y).Value2), then you'll see the internal representation of the date, namely a number.
When you edit a cell, Excel uses yet another date format so you can see and edit all parts of the date: year, month, day and possibly hour, minutes and seconds. This is because your cell's date format could be restricted to just the month name.
Another complexity is added by internationalization. Certain date formats aren't applied directly but are a hint for using a date format from the current user's settings. So the format is first replaced with another date format and then applied. Furthermore, certain parts of the date and time formats are affected by the user's settings. And finally, the patterns of the date format are translated (in English, yyyy stands for the year, in German it's jjjj). When the Excel spreadsheet is saved, these formats are stored in the English form so that the sheet can be opened by user's and Excel installations with any language. In your case, internationalization probably affects the date format used when you edit the cell (putting month before day and using 12-hour display with AM/PM looks like Northern America).
I don't quite understand why Excel displays "7/22/2011 12:00:00AM" (instead of "7/22/2011 0:00:00AM"). I'm pretty sure your date/time has a time part of "0:00". But the internal number (as reveal by Value2) will tell you for sure.
It's like a formula, in the cell it will show the result, in the formula bar it will show the formula. The cell you can format, the formula bar you cannot. So you can change the cell's format to however you would like it to look like.
So, if you want to format the msgbox then you would need to do the following:
MsgBox (Format(ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Cells(x,y), "m/d/yyyy h:mm")