How To Clean Date Data In Excel

How to convert various non-standard date formats to standard date in Excel?

Maybe you have encountered with various non-standard date formats when you use the Excel workbook. Excel doesn't recognize them and you can't use them for any calculation purpose or change their format as you need. How could you change these strange date formats to the Excel standard date?

Convert dates stored as text to normal Excel date with formula
Convert numbers to normal Excel date with Text to Columns function
Easily convert various non-standard dates to normal Excel date with Kutools for Excel

Convert dates stored as text to normal Excel date with formula

Here I will talk about using DateValue function to change the text dates to proper Excel dates. When you input '2013/03/21 into a cell, that apostrophe before the date is used to indicate to Excel that the value in the cell is text value (see following screenshot). You can convert this text dates to Excel date as following steps:

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1. In the adjacent cell B1, enter the formula = Datevalue(A1) , see screenshot:

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2. Then press Enter key, the formula returns a number 41317. This is the correct answer, but it has the wrong format. So you need to change the date format.

3. Select the cell B1 and right-click, choose Format Cells from the context menu. In the Format Cells dialog box, click Number > Date, and choose the local date as you need. See screenshot:

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4. Then click OK, the number has been converted to normal Excel date. And then select the cell B1 and drag the fill handle over to the range that you want to contain this formula. See screenshot:

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Tip : Maybe you also have this date format 2013-mar-12 , the Datevalue function can change it to Excel date as well. Do as this:

1. Enter the formula =DATEVALUE(RIGHT(A1,2)&"-"&MID(A1,6,3)&"-"&LEFT(A1,4)) into the blank cell B1. See screenshot:

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2. Then tap the Enter key, select cell B1, and then drag the fill handle to the range you need. See screenshot:

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These are only two simple examples, if you have any other text date format, you need other formulas to deal with.

Convert numbers to normal Excel date with Text to Columns function

Sometimes you may have numbers such as 20130321 in cells, but now you want to convert it to normal Excel date 3/21/2013 , the Text to Columns tool can convert the numbers to recognized Excel date.

1. Select the cells that you want to change.

2. Click Data > Text to Columns, in the Convert Text to Columns Wizard, check Delimited, and click Next.

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3. In step2, directly click Next to continue.

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4. In step 3, select Date from the Column data format, and choose YMD from the Date drop down list. See screenshot:

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5. Then click Finish, and the numbers in the selected cells have been changed to the normal Excel date. See screenshots:

Convert various non-standard dates to normal Excel date with Kutools for Excel

Different non-standard dates need different solutions, so we need a handy and multifunctional method which can help us to change various strange dates to normal Excel date at the same time. With the Convert to date of Kutools for Excel, you can quickly convert some non-standard date format which cannot be identifying by Excel as the normal date format.

Before applying Kutools for Excel, please download and install it firstly.

1. Select the range with non-standard dates you want to convert, click Kutools > Content > Convert to date, see screenshot:

2. Then the Convert to Date dialog box pops up, you can see all non-standard dates in selected range are converted to normal date format at the same time. See screenshot:

If you want to have a free trial ( 30-day) of this utility, please click to download it, and then go to apply the operation according above steps.

Demo: Convert various non-standard date formats to standard date

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