On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 12:34 -0700, Brewster Gillett wrote:
> Brewster Gillett wrote:
>
> > > Here's what I have. 678-row Calc file, names & addresses and some
> > > additional information. One of those is a column for "date on list".
> > > Unfortunately the way I get the file, as a CSV, those entries are
> > > not formatted specifically as dates, even though they all follow a
> > > common format of MM/DD/YYYY. I note that each entry is preceded *in the
> > > edit window*, but *not* in the cell itself, by a single quote. I believe
> > > this single quote is a forced text format identifier of some sort.
> Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > =DATEVALUE($CELL) will convert a text representation of a date to a date
> > value.
> bg:
> Sounds workable, but where and under what screen am I going to enter it
> in order to apply it to all 678 rows in that column? I tried entering it
> in the edit window on the first one, and got #NAME? as a response.
Insert a column
enter =DATEVALUE($THEDATECELL)
copy-and-paste that one cell to the rest of the column
copy the date value column
paste as values over the old column
delete the column you created
> The other question is, how can it be that you can highlight ("SELECT")
> an entire column, go into "FORMAT, CELLS" where it gives you at least
> two date options, and the option selection is ignored WRT the selected
> cells? I can go back to the "FORMAT" dropdown, and the specific form
> of date that I selected earlier is still highlighted, but when I attempt
> to perform that operation on even just one cell, it ignores the
> selection - is it that single-quote that's binding things up?
Simple - date formats only apply to date values. So your selection is
applied but has no effect.
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