PHPExcel putting string date into .xls

Question

guys. I have dates at DB as strings "d/m/Y". When I put this dates into Excel, it shows me normal dates like 03/10/2000, but when I click on the cell, it show me the value '03/10/2000 . So, the value is string, and not date as required for me.

So, I transformed the date from DB to a PHP date object and get sure with var_dump that date is Date object with that code :

$date = date_create_from_format('d/m/Y', $array[$i-20]['Date']);
              $date->format('m/d/Y');

but anyway, the values in generated .xls are with ' before value.

Why it appears and how can I solve it ?

Answer 1

MS Excel stores dates as a serialized timestamp, the number of days since 1st January 1900 (or 1st January 1904 if using the Mac calendar). To store a value as a date (and not simply as a string), you need to convert your string date to a serialized timestamp, and then set the format mask for the cell.

$date = date_create_from_format('d/m/Y', $array[$i-20]['Date']);
$excelDate = PHPExcel_Shared_Date::PHPToExcel($date);

Set $excelDate as the cell value

$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()->setCellValue('C11', $excelDate );

and then apply the format mask to that cell

$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()
    ->getStyle('C11')
    ->getNumberFormat()
    ->setFormatCode(PHPExcel_Style_NumberFormat::FORMAT_DATE_YYYYMMDD2);

The 02types.php example script in the `/Examples` folder demonstrates this

EDIT

You can (and it's more efficient to) apply a style to a range of cells: just specify the range in the getStyle() call.

$objPHPExcel->getActiveSheet()
    ->getStyle('C11:C200')
    ->getNumberFormat()
    ->setFormatCode(PHPExcel_Style_NumberFormat::FORMAT_DATE_YYYYMMDD2);

To get details of available format: PHPExcel has a number of pre-defined formats built-in, and those can be found as constants in Classes/PHPExcel/Style/NumberFormat.php . However, you're not limited to that set of formats; and (in the same way that MS Excel lets you define "custom" formats) you can simply pass a string defining the format (eg "d-mmm-yyyy") using pretty much any of the rules that can be used for MS Excel number format masks as the format