Share via

Stop text converting to a date when saving as a CSV for upload into ERP system

Anonymous
2021-03-09T16:52:02+00:00

Hello community!

I need to enter text data into a .csv file to be uploaded into an ERP. The data represents products that need to be associated with a Product Line in our system. One of our designers uses the month and year as a name for collections, i.e. AUGUST2021, thus I am entering the product line into the .csv as AUGUST2021 (you probably know where this is going...)

No matter what I have tried, the .csv WILL NOT STOP CONVERTING it to Aug-22, which the ERP is taking as not only the date, but also adding the time to it and throwing out an error message. 

I have scoured help forums and cannot find a solution that works. I hope I'm missing something obvious?

One issue with why some of the other fixes I've found in threads won't work for this- the file can only be a .csv, it cannot change it to a .txt file.

Thank you very much for any assistance!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

Answer accepted by question author

  1. Anonymous
    2021-03-11T18:57:56+00:00

    Hi Luci,

    Thanks for using Microsoft products and posting in the community, may I know if you have checked @ RonRosenfeld's last reply?

    In addition, you can refer to the following articles to see if the solutions could work for you:

    -      csv - Stop Excel from automatically converting certain text values to dates - Stack Overflow

    -      Stop Excel from Converting Text to Number or Date format when Opening a CSV file

    When you have time, you are welcome to come back and let us know if you still need help here.

    Hope you are all well during this period, stay safe and have a nice day : ) 

    Best Regards,

    Arck

    0 comments

5 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2021-03-09T21:16:23+00:00

    If it's not saving the data in that column as a date, why is the ERP giving me an error message indicating that the information in that column isn't text?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2021-03-09T18:44:24+00:00

    That is a different problem from what you wrote. Saving a csv file does NOT change the format in the CSV file.

    However, OPENing a csv file with Excel WILL change the format in EXCEL. But if your ERP is accessing the csv file, that should not be an issue unless there is some problem with whatever program your ERP is using to import the csv file.

    To avoid the conversion when you OPEN a csv file in Excel, you must IMPORT the file and designate that column as TEXT before Excel converts it. OPENing the file will not allow you to do that.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2021-03-09T18:26:54+00:00

    I didn't try reopening it in a text editor, but that still wouldn't help the fact that when I reopen the file in Excel it has switched the cell back to Aug-22, when I had saved the .csv, the cell read AUGUST2021. When you reopen the file in Excel is it switching the text back to a date? I formatted the cells to be text, but that formatting is ignored when I save the .csv.

    I am manually adding the data into the .csv from other documents.

    When I attempt to upload to the ERP system, it comes back with an error because its not expecting a date in the field. The error message from the system clearly shows that it's interpreting the field as a date and not text.

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2021-03-09T18:12:10+00:00

    I cannot reproduce your problem.

    I create a worksheet with some dates entered as text in cells A1:A2

    I save it as csv file and open it in a text editor:

    As you can see, it is not being changed by the process of conversion from Excel to a csv.

    Your problem lies elsewhere. Possibly you did not describe how you are creating the csv in a way I can understand; or there is an issue with how the ERP is interpreting CSV files.

    0 comments