Re: [libreoffice-users] Calc DATEVALUE() accepts only locale format

At 22:35 04/03/2012 +0100, Ferry Toth wrote:
> With the dutch localization DATEVALUE accepts 1-jan-2011 and 
> 1-mrt-2011 (correct dutch format) but not 1-mar-2011 (english US) 
> regardless if I set the standard language for the document to 
> English US or not. Only if I set the 'locale setting' to US does it 
> accept 1-mar-2011. I am trying make sense of some weird data format 
> (2011MAR) which is English based. To me that seems a common 
> situation, and I would not want to change the LO global localization 
> settings as that changes all date formats in the spreadsheet to 
> english. Couldn't datavalue take the locale of the formatted cell? 
> Or is there a better trick to ge this done?

If you cannot find a direct way of doing this sort of thing, you can 
always do the conversion yourself explicitly.  It's no doubt sensible 
for you to keep Dutch settings, so you will probably need to write up 
the English month name abbreviations.  Construct a table of these, 
with JAN, FEB, MAR, and so on in one column and the numbers 1 to 12 
in the next column to the right.  Select all twenty-four cells, go to 
Insert | Names > | Define..., and give the table a name - perhaps "Months".

Suppose your value "2011MAR" is in A1.  Try this formula:
 =DATE(LEFT(A1;4);VLOOKUP(RIGHT(A1;3);Months;2;0);1)

The LEFT() function takes the first four characters as the year.  The 
RIGHT() function takes the last three characters, and the VLOOKUP() 
function looks these up in the Months list to produce a month 
number.  These are combined by DATE() to give the first of the relevant month.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


--
For unsubscribe instructions e-mail to: users+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted