Thank you Ron, that seemed to be the problem, Text disguising as a date. I'll see what I can do to work around it.

Daniel

On Thursday, November 22, 2012 7:48:44 PM UTC-5, Ron Rosenfeld wrote:
On Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:28:42 -0800 (PST), Daniel wrote:



Hi,

I'm trying to add some days build a macro that adds days to a date

from an existing excel file.

However, the excel file may come from multiple sources and the way

they organize the date may come in different formats (dd/mm/yyyy or mm/

dd/yyyy). When I open the file in Excel (mine is configured to be mm/

dd/yyyy) it automatically assumes that format and the ones that do not

fit are changed to fit.



Is there a way for Excel to transform the date into its numerical

value before it changes the format independently of the format the

user used (and sometimes the date itself) so I can manipulate the

information?



Thanks in advance,



Daniel F. Uribe



You are leaving something out.



If the files you are importing are Excel files, with "real" dates, the nationality of the computer on which the file was created should not be an issue. It should already be there as a numerical value. There might be an issue, however, if some of the Excel files are using the 1904 date system.

However, if the files you are importing are text files, then you need to do the conversion using the "text to columns" or "text import" wizard.

If the file is a .txt file, opening it should bring up the text-to-columns wizard where there is a step at which you can specify the format of the date column.

If the file is a .csv file, you can either change it to a .txt file (merely by changing the suffix), or choose to "import" the file rather than open it, which should open the import wizard, giving the same functionality.



If the above does not help, please provide a more complete description of exactly what is going on.