I have a set of pivot tables that use external csv files as their data sources. The csv files originally contained dates in the format dd/mm/yy (e.g. 31/01/13). The pivot tables did not recognise these as dates. I converted the dates in the csv files to dd/mm/yyyy (e.g. 31/01/2013) but these were still not recognised as dates by the pivot tables.
I tried setting up a calculated field =DATEVALUE(date_from_csv) but when used in the pivot table (I'm using the Max option to select the most recent date) I get #VALUE! errors.
I have tried converting the csv file to xlsx and also importing the data into the workbook that contains the pivot table - but I can't change from the external connection to use the internal data. I don't want to rebuild the pivots as there are a lot of variables and formatting that would take ages to redo.
Any ideas??
The problem was caused by the date column being blank for some rows and I found that if I moved a row to the top (after the header line) that had all the fields filled in, then Excel got the formats correct and the pivot tables now work!
Related
I am using a GETPIVOTDATA function in Excel to source data from a pivot table generated by a Power BI query (everything was originally only in excel, the file got too large, so i stored the main tables in PBI but kept the reports in excel for mgmt's sake).
=GETPIVOTDATA("[Measures].["&$A$100&"]",'PIVOT Table_test'!$A$126,"[Master].[field1]","[Master].[field1].&["&C$26&"]","[Master].[AsofDate]","[Master].[AsofDate].&[2022-04-30T00:00:00]")
However, I want to make the GETPIVOTDATA function as dynamic as possible to prevent having too many hardcoded fields/items for each table that fields the charts we look at. However, when i reference the pivot table, the '[Asof]' field populates the static item as "...&[2022-04-30T00:00:00]")...
I have been trying to change that to reference a header row that contains a Short Date value (4/30/2022) like &["&$B&1"&"]")... but i keep getting #ref errors, every other field accepts the "&&" method, and when i leave the hardcoded timestamp in the formula, it populates.
So it has to be that reference but i do not understand what I am doing wrong. I have also tried changing the format of both the header row in Excel and the field within PBI but to no success.
Found the answer on another site. The solution in the item brackets is to write the following:
["&TEXT($A22,"yyyy-mm-dd""T00:00:00""")&"]
I have an .xlsx file that has some custom date/time formatted columns. Specifically, I have 2 columns that have custom format of yyyy-mm-ddThh:nn:ssZ
When I open it in LibreOffice Calc, the dates in those 2 columns show as decimal numbers instead, eg. 44778.6423148148
If I open the document in Excel Online, everything looks as it should. If I change the format of those 2 columns within Calc using the same format of yyyy-mm-ddThh:nn:ssZ, they change just fine.
I also wanted to add that I am exporting this file from PowerBi so I don't have the option to save it in an older format of excel.
How can I have it retain the formatting when opening the file in Calc?
I am trying to create a data source in Tableau (10.0) where I am joining a table from SQL with an Excel file. The join happens on a site id but when reading the id from the excel source, Tableau strips the leading zeros (and SQL keeps leading zeros). I see this example
to add the leading zeros back as a new, calculated field. But the join is still dropping rows because the id is not properly formatted when making the join.
How do I get the excel data source to read the column with the leading zeros so I can do the join?
Launch Excel and choose to open a new blank workbook.
Click the Data tab and select From Text.
Browse to the saved CSV file and select Import.
Ensure that Delimited is selected and click Next.
Leave Tab as the delimiter and click Next.
Select the column containing the data with leading zeros and click
Text.
Repeat for each column which contains leading zeros.
Click Finish.
Click OK.
Never heard of or used tableau, but it sounds as though something (jet/ace database driver being used to read excel file?) is determining the column to be numeric and parsing the data as numbers, losing leading zeroes
If your attempts at putting them back are giving you grief, I'd recommend trying the other direction instead; get sqlserver to convert its strings to numbers. Number matching should be more reliable than String matching, so long as the two systems don't handle rounding differently :)
If your Excel file was read in from a CSV and the Site ID is showing "Number Stored as Text", I think you can solve your problem by telling Tableau on the Data Source entry that the field is actually a string. On the preview data source view, change the "#" (designating number) to string so that both the SQL source and the Excel source are both strings before doing the join.
This typically has to do with the way Excel stores values as mentioned above. I would play around with the number formatting for the Site ID column in Excel itself, not Tableau, and changed that two "Text" in Excel. You can verify if Tableau will read it properly with the leading 0s by exporting your excel file to csv and looking in the csv files to see if the leading 0s are still there.
At the end of importing a .txt file through the help of the wizard i get a message that some elements were not imported correctly. I have a column in the .txt which should contain dates, but for some reason when i select the column containing dates, and i set its type to date and time, for some reason access cannot recognize them as dates. I'm thinking that it's because of the language difference. I use dates like: 1.1.2011, whereas access uses 1/1/2011.
Where can i change the format?
You can in the Advanced section of the Import Wizard.
If that doesn't work, don't import but link the file and specify the date field as text.
Then create a simple select query where you use the linked table as source. Select all the fields you need.
For the date field, use this expression:
TrueDate: CDate(Replace([YourTextDateField], ".", "/"))
Clean up other fields as well.
Now use this query for the further processing of the data.
I'm trying to automate a process with SSIS that exports data into a flat file (.csv) that is then saved to a directory, where it will be scanned and imported by some accounting software. The software (unfortunately) only recognizes dates that are in MM/DD/YYYY fashion. I have tried every which way to cast or convert the data pulled from SQL to be in the MM/DD/YYYY, but somehow the data is always recognized as either a DT_Date or DT_dbDate data type in the flat file connection, and saved down as YYYY-MM-DD.
I've tried various combinations of data conversion, derived columns, and changing the properties of the flat file columns to string in hopes that I can at least use substring operations to get this formatted correctly, but it never fails to save down as YYYY-MM-DD. It is truly baffling. The preview in the OLE DB source will show the dates as "MM/DD/YYYY" but somehow it always changes to "YYYY-MM-DD" when it hits the flat file.
I've tried to look up solutions (for example, here: Stubborn column data type in SSIS flat flat file connection manager won't change. :() but with no luck. Amazingly if I merely open the file in Excel and save it, it will then show dates in a text editor as "MM/DD/YYYY", only adding more mystery to this Bermuda Triangle-esque caper.
If there are any tips, I would be very appreciative.
This is a date formatting issue.
In SQL and in SSIS, dates have one literal string format and that is YYYY-MM-DD. Ignore the way they appear to you in the data previewer and/or Excel. Dates are displayed to you based upon your Windows regional prefrences.
Above - unlike the US - folks in the UK will see all dates as DD/MM/YYYY. The way we are shown dates is NOT the way they are stored on disk. When you open in Excel it does this conversion as a favor. It's not until you SAVE that the dates are stored - as text - according to your regional preferences.
In order to get dates to always display the same way. We need to save them not as dates, but as strings of text. TO do this, we have to get the data out of a date column DT_DATE or DT_DBDATE and into a string column: DT_STR or DT_WSTR. Then, map this new string column into your csv file. Two ways to do this "date-to-string" conversion...
First, have SQL do it. Update your OLE DB Source query and add one more column...
SELECT
*,
CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), MyDateColumn, 101) AS MyFormattedDateColumn
FROM MyTable
The other way is let SSIS do it. Add a Derived Column component with the expression
SUBSTRING([MyDateColumn],6,2) + "/" + SUBSTRING([MyDateColumn],8,2) + "/" + SUBSTRING([MyDateColumn],1,4)
Map the string columns into your csv file, NOT the date columns. Hope this helps.
It's been a while but I just came across this today because I had the same issue and hope to be able to spare someone the trouble of figuring it out. What worked for me was adding a new field in the Derived Column transform rather than trying to change the existing field.
Edit
I can't comment on Troy Witthoeft's answer, but wanted to note that if you have a Date type input, you wouldn't be able to do SUBSTRING. Instead, you could use something like this:
(DT_WSTR,255)(MONTH([Visit Date])) + "/" + (DT_WSTR,255)(DAY([Visit Date])) + "/" + (DT_WSTR,255)(YEAR([Visit Date]))