Read CSV and dates

hsangha2hsangha2 Member Posts: 1 Learner I
edited January 2019 in Help
I always seem to encounter an issue when reading csv date / times. Applications like Tableau seem to struggle when reading these particular fields, is there anything that can be done so that dates are read correctly by other applications such as Tableau?

Thanks
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Answers

  • hughesfleming68hughesfleming68 Member Posts: 323 Unicorn
    edited November 2018
    You can use the Date to Nominal operator to format your dates before saving your csv. You are not limited by the choices in the pull down in the format date box. You can format it the way you need to eg. yyyyMMdd.
  • M_MartinM_Martin RapidMiner Certified Analyst, Member Posts: 125 Unicorn
    I'd also recommending that you double check to confirm that the date formatting in your .csv file is the same in all rows, especially if you're pulling together information from multiple systems (and potentially data from machines with other regional settings) into your csv file.  Also, I'd recommend that you make sure that the date format of your data is fully compatible with the regional date formatting of the underlying OS your machine is running.
    Within Tableau, is your date field being recognized by Tableau as a date field, or does Tableau think it is text?  Tableau also allows you to change the data type of a field when you import the data, or even when after it has been imported - just right click on the data field whose type you want to change and you'll see an option to change the datatype.  Tableau also has built in functions (logical, conversion, etc.) you can use to create a calculation that will output a date value compatible with the regional settings of your system if in fact Tableau does not recognize your date field as a date datatype.  Hope this helps and best wishes, Michael Martin
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