Ms Excel date formatting issue

Question

I'm trying to prepare a query string from an excel spreadsheet where I have a problem with excel date.

Desired Result

Insert into table_name values("2013:09:10 10:00:00");

Data

excel spreadsheet cell A1 = "2013/09/10 10:00 AM"

Trying

within Cell B1 I am trying to put ="Insert into table values('"& A1 &"');"

Problem

Instead of giving desired result it gives me something like

Insert into table_name values("45265.545486745456");

Please help,

Thanks

Answer 1

Excel stores dates as a serial string that counts the days from January 1, 1900. For example, Excel sees 10:00AM on September 10, 2013 as 41527.41666...

To get the text output formatted like a date, you can use the TEXT function. In your example, you want the function call to look like this:

=TEXT(A1,"yyyy:mm:dd hh:mm:ss")

To fix your cell B1, you might write it like this:

="Insert into table values('"&TEXT(A1,"yyyy:mm:dd hh:mm:ss")&"');"