Convert text YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS to Excel date

Question

I have a spreadsheet in Excel where in column, for example, B at the cell B5 and down there is a date entered in text format as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. I want to convert it in a such way that Excel will be able to recognize it as date, because then I need to use filters and so on.

I found this question and tried to do it as follows: go to Format Cells, select Date Category, change my locale to Australia, select YYYY-MM-DD, but it doesn't work.

Can anybody help me to convert all text dates in a selected column to Excel dates? Hours, minutes and seconds aren't very important.

Answer 1

Here's what you need to do:

1. Make sure the cells with the text dates are formatted as General .

2. Use the DATEVALUE function to convert the text dates to Excel serial numbers. For example, if B5 has a YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, then in cell D5 type:

=DATEVALUE(B5)

3. Format cell D5 as a Date .

See also: Convert Dates Stored as text to Dates (Microsoft Office)

Answer 2

since date format doesn't work, please try

right click>> format cells>>Category= custom>> type=d/mm/yyyy h:mm If you do not want h:mm then just use type=d/mm/yyyy

Let me know how it goes.