This article will explain how to convert the date YYYYMMDD to DD/MM/YYYY. You can use one of two techniques:
- Formulae
- Excel tool
Convert YYYYMMDD date with formulas
With this technique, you must extract each part of a date with the text functions.
So if you have a YYYYMMDD format to transform, here are the steps to follow.
Step 1: Extract the year
=LEFT(A1,4) => 2018
Step 2: Extract the day
=RIGHT(A1,2) => 25
Step 3: Extract the month
This step is a little bit more difficult because you must extract 2 characters in the middle of your string. In that case, you use the function MID.
=MID(A1,5,2) => 12
You extract 2 characters from the 5th position
Step 4: Convert each part as a date
Now we are going to gather each part of the date to return a "real" date. To do this we use the DATE function.
=DATE(B1,D1,C1)
Convert YYYYMMDD without formula
But you can convert YYYYMMDD date, or any other date format, to your local date format with the tool Text to Columns. Normally this tool is used to split text with a delimiter.
1. Select your date(s) to convert
2. Go to the menu Data > Text to Columns
3. Skip the 2 first steps because there is no need to split your column 😉
4. The key to the technique is the 3rd step. With the dropdown list, you can select the type of date format that you have in your column.
So, in our example, we are going to select YMD because our dates are written YYYYMMDD.
5. Press Finish and that's it 😃
Formula or not ?
Well, it depends on what you want to do. Of course, the technique with the tool "Text to Columns" is easier than the formulas.
But if your list will be updated often, creating formulas to perform the conversion is a good solution to avoid redoing the 5 steps.
Gajanan Funde
CA. Shivanand
Frédéric LE GUEN
Cassie Paulus
Daniel
Robert
Antoine
Lester Cantem
Vrishali
Linda
Stephen
Kenif C
Rajesh Kadia
badejo saheed adetunbosun
28/07/2022 @ 13:38
Very Useful. Thanks a lot.
31/05/2022 @ 13:25
Very useful made my work more easier. Thank You
31/05/2022 @ 15:25
You're welcome
02/11/2022 @ 21:55
You’re the best! I have been looking for a solution to this for a while now. Thank you for sharing!
08/11/2022 @ 10:54
You're welcome
19/11/2021 @ 03:53
I think the simplest formula to convert those values would be this one...
=0+TEXT(A1,"0000-00-00")
Note: This returns the date serial number so you will have to apply a cell format to make it display the way you want.
16/12/2022 @ 06:45
Thank you! I tried Frederic's approach but failed to get the intended results. I checked whether if my steps had gone wrong, or were the cells' format wrong etc, i didn't manage to troubleshoot. Rick, your formula worked instantaneously. Thank you Rick and Frederic for your kind contribution to everyone who needed help! Appreciated
26/10/2021 @ 18:43
If the date in format yyyymmdd is the result of a formula (e.g. extracting it from a longer field using MID(...)), the text to column method does not work, since excel tries to split the formula itself and not the value. Of course, trying to split for example
= mid(a1;10;8)
using dmy format does not work.
09/09/2021 @ 16:17
I found the thrice conversions from number to text to number (since parameters to DATE() are numbers) to be quite a load when dealing with big datasets.
So I spent some time to try to optimise it; and I ended (for the moment) with
= DATE( A1/10000, MOD(A1/100, 100), MOD(A1,100) )
(I added spaces just for presentation.)
It relies on the fact that Excel rounds to integer the arguments when invoking DATE or MOD; it somewhat assumes that the number in A1 is between 19000000 and 20something. It even works OK when the cell in A1 actually contains a text value which looks like a yyyymmdd date (like your proposals do), which could prove useful.
25/08/2021 @ 02:25
Thank you very much for this. It has saved me a lot of time. Much appreciated. Lester
21/05/2021 @ 19:23
Thank you so much for the solution. very quick and easy
23/01/2020 @ 22:41
i have a program to write out the function =date(2018,1,30) when the sheet is created. When I open the sheet, it is displayed as 43130, the serial number. How do I get it to display as 1/30/2018 without having to open the sheet, double click to edit the cell then enter to display the date format?
24/01/2020 @ 10:10
It's because your cell as the format Number "General". Have a look at this article to apply the format you want
24/12/2019 @ 12:10
=DATEVALUE(RIGHT([date],2)&"/"&MID([date],5,2)&"/"&LEFT([date],4))... does it all in one cell...
03/01/2020 @ 06:29
Right
30/10/2019 @ 02:31
Very useful. Thank you.
24/09/2019 @ 06:09
Excellent tool
27/06/2019 @ 16:13
Your message. hi was trying to enter date and is not going what should I do please