I have a VBA code that helps users schedule projects by entering either a date or days until completion for particular tasks and then creates a graph that shows the percent completion of the project.
The VBA code hinges on the formatting of the cell to perform its calculations. Excel does a great job of choosing a number or date correctly the first time a user inputs a value. However if a user was to input a date and then decide to input a number (ex: 7) they would end up with 1/7/1900 as the date, which then makes excel perform the VBA incorrectly.
Is there a way to get Excel to "reconsider" the formatting of the cell each time it is changed? If not is there a way to force it to do so in VBA and choose either number or date formatting only?
Thanks,
-MK
Yes,
as a user prefixing an "=" is probably your best bet.
Adding "e0" on the end will format as an ugly scientific number, but at least it's accurately represented in memory.
Another option is multiplying by 100 followed by a "%".
You've accurately noticed that dates to numbers don't change back as easily. On the other hand any entry with a front-slash '/' seems to format as a date pretty reliably. The single apostrophe ' formats as Text, which is not very good for automated solutions. A number by itself is too general to change the NumberFormat, so any "automatic" solution would be non-standard.
Related
So I'm pulling data from an external source which returns Date strings of the given format: "10/26/2013 9:46:46 AM"
When I sort the data it does not seem to be able to distinguish between AM and PM values so many noonish / 1 AM values are moved towards the bottom. Has anyone dealt with this before / have a solution to make it recognize the AM/PM aspect along with the day and time?
Thanks
It looks like it is sorting this as text. It may depend on how the data is getting pulled through.
If you select one of the cells and press F2 (to edit) then enter to go to the next cell, does this change your data?
In the code that is pulling the data through, you just need to amend it slightly.
Range("D5").value = string
It may change it slightly to maybe 24 hour time depending on your computer settings
I ended up just splitting the date and time using TimeValue() and DateValue() excel functions.I then wrote a macro to do a 3 key sort based on ticker, date, and then time.
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.
We have a lot of automated spreadsheets that extract data, calculate forecasts, publish web pages, etc. It's a really messy system, and I'd love to redo it (with, say, a real web service), but we don't have permission to do that.
We run Excel 2007, with most of the spreadsheets converted to .xlsms.
Anyway, for some reason unknown to me, certain spreadsheets will format certain numeric cells as dates at seemingly random times. As you might imagine, the problem is difficult to track down, and usually I only find out when someone has written a nasty email about our data reading 3-Feb-1901 when it should read 400 (apparently Excel thinks there was a leap year in 1900).
I've explicitly set the cells in question to numeric format several times, only to find them filled with dates a week later.
I've scanned the macros (many are in the ancient Excel 4.0 macro language), they appear to be clean of any formatting changes. All copy/pastes are done as values and do not preserve source cell formatting.
There are no conditional formatting rules in the sheets in question.
Adding a little VBA to format the cells as desired in the Auto_Open subroutine appears to work around the issue.
Is this fix good enough, or in a week will I find the date format is appearing mid-calculation? If not, what is the root cause and how I can fix it?
One thing: I just read from this source that Excel '07 may spontaneously change Normal-styled cells to the format [$-409]m/d/yy h:mm AM/PM;#. Some of my cells that have changed were definitely styled Normal, but evidently not all.
I'm assuming the cells in question are the receipients of copied/pasted data, or external/queried data?
Whenever you add pasted data to a cell in excel, it runs througha routine to determine the best format for anything that's listed as "general" format, even if the source is "general" or "number". Sometimes even setting the destination cells to "number" format does not clear up this issue. But I've found the only way to to get this to work the way you need it to is to explicitly declare the format (in the macro) to the destination range in question before the paste/update/refresh operation.
I also think there's a way to disable date recognition within your VBA, but I can't remember the exact code. Try recording a macro while doing manually importing or performing your update and you should be able to use what comes up.
Edit: just did a test run, and after your connection string and destination add:
.WebDisableDateRecognition = True
That should definitely do the trick if you're pulling data in from an external source and not copy/pasting.
Just in case this helps, i had an issue where excel was auto formating my info pulled from a webpage into DATE format, to fix, in the import window, click options and UNCHECK the auto date formating option, after that, my data imported perfect!
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")