Re: [libreoffice-users] Formatting a date

Yeah, I tho't of that and tried changing it around to 14 Jan 2014.
The only thing that worked was changing it to Jan 14 2014 and then it worked automatically in it’s 
own column making the exercise with datevalue of no value.

      14 Jan 2014 Err:502 
      01/10/14 Err:502 
      01/02/14 Err:502 
      25 February 2014 Err:502 
      25 February 2014 Err:502 
      25 February 2014 '=DATEVALUE(A6) 
      30 March 2014 
     

This is what it looks like, 2 col starting with A1 [no col heading].  Line 6 so’s you can see what 
the formula looks like.

Mark W. Howe
San Juan Capistrano, CA
949-496-3453 home/ office
949-525-3914 cell [not for messages]

"Phao Binh" http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/finding_aids/inventory/2008008.pdf
-----Original Message----- 
From: Brian Barker 
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 7:34 AM 
To: users@global.libreoffice.org 
Cc: Mark Howe 
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Formatting a date 

At 07:19 19/02/2015 -0800, Mark Howe wrote:
> -----Original Message----- From: Brian Barker
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 7:05 AM
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Formatting a date
> > At 06:41 19/02/2015 -0800, Mark Howe wrote:
> > > I have text: 19 February 2015. The format for the cell is date 
> > > 2/19/2015, but it will not acknowledge that or sort correctly. As 
> > > if it's formatted for date but not accepting that fact. What did I do wrong?
> >
> > If you want your existing values to be genuine dates - as you will 
> > want to do if you need to include them in calculations or even just 
> > sort them - you must first convert the text into the equivalent 
> > date. Fortunately. the DATEVALUE() function is available to do this 
> > for you. Just put =DATEVALUE(Xn) in another column and fill down.
>
> I interpreted what you wrote to mean that =datevalue(a1) would 
> convert the contents of A1 into a date.

Yup - provided that the value in A1 is a "valid date expression".

> It did not and produced err502. What am I missing?

Then what is in A1 cannot be what Calc considers (in your locale) to 
be a valid date expression. The DATEVALUE() function seems very 
robust to me: it can cope with many date formats and doesn't seem to 
be fazed by extra blanks, though it can be by extraneous commas.

Is it possible that you have a column heading in A1?

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker
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