Date Time Formats

Date and time formats can be set from the table and from many locations in Strater. Date and time options are case sensitive. Months always need to be entered with upper case M and minutes must always be entered with lower case m.

When dates are parsed during input/import, the month and day of week names must match those of the local language as set in the Windows Control Panel, otherwise the entry will not be recognized as a valid date and will be treated as a text string.

When the recognized format is ambiguous (i.e. 10/7/12), the month, day, and year order is determined by the Windows locale. In some countries, this will be recognized as M/d/yy, in others as d/M/yy, and in others as YY/M/d. It is important to use non-ambiguous date/time formats when the Windows locale may change.

Date/Time Formatting Tips

• In the table, save data files containing date/time formatting as Excel files to preserve the date time formatting as seen in the table.

• You can save date/time-formatted data files as ASCII files (.DAT, .CSV, .TXT, .BNA, or BLN). Sometimes this is necessary if you exceed the Excel row or column limits. When opening the file in Strater, you can make the serial dates appear in date/time format by using Data | Format | Format Cells.

• If you have formatted the data as date/time in another spreadsheet program such as Excel, the data are formatted as date/time in Strater.

• Whenever possible, enter and display dates and times in one of the many calendar formats, e.g., "6/14/2009” or “14-June-2009”, and let the software handle converting to/from internal numeric representations.

• When the recognized format is ambiguous (i.e. 10/7/12), the month, day, and year order is determined by the Windows locale. In some countries, this will be recognized as M/d/yy, in others as d/M/yy, and in others as YY/M/d. It is important to use non-ambiguous date/time formats when the Windows locale may change. The date order and data file locale can be set in the Data Import Options dialog when importing data files from different locales.

• If dates/times occur before 1/1/0000, use the BC or BCE suffix after the date. So, Alexander III of Macedon's birthday would be listed as 20-July-356 BCE in the worksheet. Using AD or CE is not necessary and the worksheet will automatically remove these in dates after 1/1/0000.

• The year 0 is defined, according to the ISO 8601:2004 standard.

• When a two digit year is input in the table (00 to 99), it means the year in the current century. For instance, inputting 11/4/13, indicates that the year is 2013, not 0013. In order to have the year 0013, the full four digits (0013) must be input for the date. So, the date would be input as 11/4/0013 CE for November 4, 0013 CE or 11/4/0013 BCE for November 4, 0013 BCE.

Date/Time Formats

These are the defined date and time formats. These can be used in the worksheet Format Cells dialog, in the Property Manager label format section, or from the Text Editor's Date/Time Format Builder dialog. Any combination of these formats can be used in any of the locations.

All rows below use the date July 9, 2014 at 6:45:44.12345 in the evening for the Example.

See Also

Format Cells - Number Page