[R] Excel export date format

[Duncan Mackay]

At 09:31 09/07/2011, you wrote:
>Hi folks,
>I have been tormented for some time by Excel's habit of exporting 
>dates to CSV files as mm/dd/yyyy format even if the dates are 
>formatted dd/mm/yyyy in the display. What's worse, if there are 
>dates that are of ambiguous (6/6/2011) and unambiguous (16/6/2011) 
>format in the same column, Excel reformats the unambiguous dates and 
>leaves the ambiguous ones as they were! Yesterday I discovered that 
>if the dates are in international format (2011-6-6) Excel seems to 
>export them as dd/mm/yyyy, and all correctly. As I suspect that 
>there are a lot of R users who suffer from this, I thought I would 
>pass on the info.
>
>Jim
>
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Hi Jim

I have had problems with Excel dates when formatted as dd/mm/yyyy 
Excel changes some to mm/dd/yyyy  for months Oct/Nov and Jan/Feb and days 1-9
so dd/mm/yyyy becomes mm/dd/yy 01/10/2005  becomes 10/01/2005.
It happens with earlier versions of Excel  - I do not know what 
happens with the later versions as I have not experienced them as much.
Sometimes if data has been imported from various sources with 
different date formatting the resultant date format may differ.

I do not know if it will shed some light on the problem.

Regards

Duncan

Duncan Mackay
Department of Agronomy and Soil Science
University of New England
ARMIDALE NSW 2351
Email: home mackay at northnet.com.au