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DateTime wrong when exporting to csv in R

9 messages · Saurabh Agrawal, Sneha Bishnoi, Jeff Newmiller +2 more

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Hi All!

This seems to be trival but I am not able to find a solution for it.
I have a dataframe with datetime columns in form of  ("%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%OS").

I write it to csv file. Whne i open the csv file the date time format are
in some number form .
So even if I use custome settings from excel to change it into date time
format, it gives me wrong value.

My data frame is as below:

 PostDate                            Status                 ArrTime
               NumGuests
 2014-08-14 16:13:08.850       O                    2012-01-13 00:00:00.000
     6
 2014-08-14 16:13:08.850       A


-SB
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Maybe converting POSIXct to character string using "format" before writing
to csv will help.
On 20 August 2014 17:23, Sneha Bishnoi <sneha.bishnoi at gmail.com> wrote:

            

  
  
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Tried that..does not help :(



On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 8:03 AM, Saurabh Agrawal <sagrawal at idrcglobal.com>
wrote:

  
    
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Could you please post your code and some sample data?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5963269/how-to-make-a-great-r-reproducible-example
On 20 August 2014 17:43, Sneha Bishnoi <sneha.bishnoi at gmail.com> wrote:

            

  
  
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This problem is in Excel or your use thereof, not in R, and is therefore not technically "on topic" here.

FWIW I am aware that localization of Excel can change the default date formats for input. I suspect that your installation of Excel has a different default date format than you are using in R (like MDY) that is attempting to convert the file before you start messing with formats. This would incorrectly interpret some cells and fail entirely for others (leaving those cells as strings). My suggestion is to have R output MDY rather than DMY. If that is not satisfactory then you probably ought to ask for help in an Excel forum.
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On August 20, 2014 4:53:41 AM PDT, Sneha Bishnoi <sneha.bishnoi at gmail.com> wrote:
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Hi

If you really need to have minutes and seconds etc in excel then use a
package that can write datetime columns that excel can read eg. access
rather that csv.
Microsoft is well known for changing dates and date formats - remember excel
is a worksheet application not a database - caveat emptor.

If you use a formatted date that excel can recognize then excel has less of
a tendency to change it.

Datetime is a pain in any language because of the irregularity of time.
Beware MS does not get it right if you are using dates from ca 1890 to 1910

Duncan


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


-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
Behalf Of Sneha Bishnoi
Sent: Wednesday, 20 August 2014 22:14
To: Saurabh Agrawal
Cc: r-help
Subject: Re: [R] DateTime wrong when exporting to csv in R

Tried that..does not help :(



On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 8:03 AM, Saurabh Agrawal <sagrawal at idrcglobal.com>
wrote:

  
    
#
On Aug 20, 2014, at 4:53 AM, Sneha Bishnoi wrote:

            
What does "same number form" mean?
PostDate                            Status                 ArrTime              NumGuests
2014-08-14 16:13:08.850       O                    2012-01-13 00:00:00.000    6
2014-08-14 16:13:08.850       A
The reason you are asked to post in plain text is to avoid the line wrapping and other mangling of data that html formatting causes. I've reformatted your posting to be what appears to be a very incomplete representation of your file.

I substituted tabs for the varying number of space
-- opened and empty excel workbook
-- formatted the first and third columns with a custom format for a date-time in the POSIX standard format (or a close as I can get to that in Excel, anyway)  as illustrated in the attached .png file.



-- open the tab-separated file.

Dates and times all agree.
David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA
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The image file I prepared and attached did not make it through. Trying again.
#
On Aug 20, 2014, at 1:48 PM, David Winsemius wrote:

            
The server seems to be rejecting PNG files (although they were accpted earlier). So trying with a PDF version of the PNG file:

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