Issues with Date and Time fields in Excel

Have you ever had an issue with date or datetime fields in Excel when working with a report exported out as CSV?  Simply change your Sugar account profile settings for Date Format and Time format to fix the issue.

Are dates exporting in m/d/yyyy format but your computer is set to d/m/yyyy?  Go to your Profile->Advanced->Locale Settings and change your date format to yyyy-mm-dd (or 2010-12-23 as it is shown in the Sugar app).  Excel will now recognize the date format properly and put it into whatever date format you have your computer set to.

Or are you exporting a datetime field like Date Created and Excel is not recognizing the date time field?  That's because the default Sugar setting for time format is 11:00pm (or hh:mmpm).  Notice that there is no space between the date and the am/pm.  Excel no longer recognizes that as a time format.  You need to change your setting to 11:00 pm (or hh:mm pm).  Adding in the space will cause Excel to recognize the time field properly.

I've explained this one enough times over the years for my fellow Excel jockeys that I figured I would finally capture it in a community post.

Enjoy!