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39

answers:

1

Hello,

We're exporting our analytics reports in various formats, among them CSV. For some clients this CSV finds it's way into Excel.

Inside the CSV file one of the columns is a Date, for example

"Start Date","Name"
"07-04-2010", "Maxim"

Excel has trouble parsing this date format, obviously depending on the Locale of the user. Is "07" is the day or the month...

Could you recommend some textual format for a Date field that excel will not have trouble parsing? I'm aiming at the most fail safe option possible. I would settle for some escape sequence that will cause excel to avoid parsing the text in the column altogether.

Thanks for helping, Maxim.

+3  A: 

You have two options. Go with the month as a string and the year as 4 digits, or use ISO formatting: yyyy-mm-dd.

David
Simple and true, ISO is what I'm after. Thanks.
Maxim Veksler