Read also the delicious story of Excel's deliberate bug-for-bug
compatibility:
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214326>
Nick
[email protected]
Kit Baum
This advice is not stable across platforms on which Excel runs. Not
all versions of Excel have the base date 1 January 1900.
I recommend ensuring that in Excel you have four-digit years in the
display format of any date field. Then a .csv file containing such
date fields is easily read, and those fields converted to Stata dates.
On Aug 29, 2008, at 02:33 , John wrote:
> Another trick with Excel dates (assuming you have the software) is to
> open the sheet in Excel and apply a general or numeric format to the
> date column. This will show you that (at least for dates subsequent
> to
> 1/1/1900) Excel uses elapsed days as well*. All you need to do is
> subtract Stata's Day 0 in Excel's number line, 21916 (1/1/1960) from
> the
> Excel elapsed day and you'll get a number that, once imported into
> Stata, can be formatted to show the correct date.
>
> E.G.: Date = Aug 28th, 1963
>
> Excel numeric equivalent: 23251 - 21916 = Stata's elapsed day 1335
>
> . di %dM_d,_CY 1335
> August 28, 1963
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
