RE: Downloading Date Fields to Excel

I use the Excel plug-in to transfer files, and I can get date fields into
Excel that act like date fields. When creating the data transfer, click the
"Format options" button when it appears, then change the date format to "USA
standard". This brought dates into Excel that acted like dates (I could use
the MONTH, DAY, and YEAR functions directly with them without editing them).

Of course, this assumes you want USA style dates.

HTH,
Loyd

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Naughton [mailto:mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 08:17
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Downloading Date Fields to Excel

For the archives, here's a quick update, since no one else has replied
with anything better. I haven't found anything that works when I transter
the file into Excel directly, but if I transfer it into a .CSV file, with
dates as character fields formatted either mm/dd/yy or mm/dd/yyyy, and
then open it in Excel, the dates work fine. It seems a little hokey, but
it'll probably work for what I'm doing.

One down side is that I lose all the field names as column headers. I
could fix that with Excel macros, but since I have total control over the
file being downloaded (it's a work file built by my program), I'm trying
something else: I've made all the fields in the file character, and I load
my field names into the first record. So far, this seems to be a pretty
good approach. (A little labor-intensive, though :-).

I don't know how many other people are having this problem, but given what
appears to be an increasing trend towards integration of different systems
this seems like an Opportunity for Improvement for IBM. . . .

Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> see from the archives that last June Peter Dow had the same problem that
>I'm having, but I didn't see that he got an answer. I've got a file on my
>AS/400 that contains some date fields, and I'm trying to use the Client
>Access file transfer to download it into Excel. The transfer wizard
>recognizes the fields as date fields, but they end up in the spreadsheet
>as alpha fields. However, if I simply edit one without changing anything,
>it magically transforms itself into a date.
>
>Is there any way to get the transfer to produce dates without going
>through this step?  Thanks very much!
>
>Mike Naughton


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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