date format

[Roland Cunningham 0]

 

I am trying to export a report that inclues dates into excel and would like to then sort on the date column. The main reason is that I am passing information to a number of cousins from different branches and I am updating details as I research them. I would then like to use the last updated date as an indicator to only pass on the individual information updated since I last contacted them.

 

I can see that there are options to change the date format in some reports - but not the 'list of' one - which would be the most useful for my exercise.

 

Any suggestions please?

[Jim Byram 0]

I can see that there are options to change the date format in some reports - but not the 'list of' one - which would be the most useful for my exercise.

List of... reports should use the selected program date format for output.

File / Preferences / Program Options / General / Date format field

[Roland Cunningham 0]

thank you Jim, but that still doesn't give me a date format that is recognised in an excel spreadsheet for sorting (unless there is another screen that I have missed somewhere??)

 

regards

Roland

[RobinL 0]

Excel has limited date recognition and sorting facilities. Dates prior to something like 1901 are not recognized. You would be probably best to export dates in a yyyy.mm.dd format which will sort correctly as text (provided if doesn't have any date modifier).

[Roland Cunningham 0]

Thanks Robin, but again no luck. Might be this date modifier (?) but I exported a list of post 1900 dates (I want to find out what records I have changed and when) and the list seems to be sorted on length - not even the year is correct.

regards Roland

[RobinL 0]

I have exported other TMG dates to CSV and sorted them without a problem, but thew last edited date is a real date in Visual Fox Pro when event dates are not. So there may be a difference. The Task Dates in the Research Log are real VFP dates and not TMG dates. It seems as if there is a difference in the handling of TMG dates and VFP dates.

[Vera Nagel 0]

Just tested the following as described in detail:

 

I'm using TMGv6.07 on Windows XP and MS Excel 2002 SP3 (Office XP Package).

 

1) Applied date format settings for TMG:

File > Preferences > Program Options > General > Date format: yyyy.mm.dd

 

2) Used TMG Report type:

Report > List of People e.g. > Print to: File / File type: Microsoft Excel v5 (XLS) - define a File name with ending .XLS

Report > ............... Options... > Output Columns whatever you specify (let's say Name, Birth Date, Death Date, Last Edited Date)

 

3) Within Excel:

Sorting in Excel via Data > Sort > sort by last.. then by birth.. sorts as expected in ascending or descending order just as you like.

 

My dataset contains data prior to 1900 as well as "incomplete" and/or totally missing dates.

 

If it's still not working for you could then please give us some detailed examples where the sort is not correct.

 

Vera

Edited November 22, 2005 by Vera Nagel