how to enter 3/14 as a barrier draw and not as date

Question

Hallo There.

Merry Christmas to all.

If i download a file from the web and it has a field called barrier draw into excel i usually use the date format as 3/14. This is actually not a date. sometimes it has 14/15.

How can i format it not to be a date. When i want to select just the first two digits i get 40030. or 40.

i have checked a lot on google and some of your earlier posts but there is nothing regarding this.

thank you

Answer 1

It would appear that the field is actually stored as a number (such as 40030 or 40982) in the file that you're downloading.

If this were a date, then I'd have guessed that it was the number of days from some some reference point such as 1 January 1900.

However, if it's a barrier draw, then perhaps it's encoded into a single number in some way?

If you can find out what the encoding is, then you could use an Excel function (or a  C# function if you're downloading via .NET) to transform it into what you want. 

Answer 2

when i export it to excel from google. it dispalys 40982. i then have to select date .short and then it displays as 3/14. when i then go and define it as text it changes to 40982. 

Answer 3

If you don't want it treating as a date, then you'll need to define it as a text column in Excel.