Excel Date to String conversion

Question

In a cell in Excel sheet I have a Date value like:

01/01/2010 14:30:00

I want to convert that Date to Text and also want the Text to look exactly like Date. So a Date value of 01/01/2010 14:30:00 should look like 01/01/2010 14:30:00 but internally it should be Text.

How can I do that in Excel?

Answer 1

The selected answer did not work for me as Excel was still not converting the text to date. Here is my solution.

Say that in the first column, A, you have data of the type 2016/03/25 21:20:00 but is stored as text. Then in column B write =DATEVALUE(A1) and in column C write =TIMEVALUE(A1).

Then in column D do =B1+C1 to add the numerical formats of the date and time.

Finally, copy the values from D into column E by right clicking in column E and select Paste Special -> Paste as Values.

Highlight the numerical values in column E and change the data type to date - I prefer using a custom date of the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

Answer 2

Here's another option. Use Excel's built in 'Text to Columns' wizard. It's found under the Data tab in Excel 2007.

If you have one column selected, the defaults for file type and delimiters should work, then it prompts you to change the data format of the column. Choosing text forces it to text format, to make sure that it's not stored as a date.

Answer 3

In some contexts using a ' character beforehand will work, but if you save to CSV and load again this is impossible.

'01/01/2010 14:30:00