Julian Date Conversion

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Julian Date Conversion

I've been trying to figure this out for a few days now.

For work, I'm trying to show that I am willing to keep track of our cigarette inventory and each carton's expiration date. So, I've figured out how to read carton codes for products from Philip Morris. But I want to be lazy (lol) and not have to figure out what month, and then day of that month, each carton was manufactured in from the Julian Date provided on the carton.

My question is, how do I get Numbers to read "2009055" and convert it to "02/23/2009"? If there is a way and it requires a different input syntax, I'll be more than happy to change over to that instead. I haven't been able to figure it out. I'm sure there's someone out there who can figure this one out. I found instructions on how to do it in Microsoft Excel. I'm sure Numbers '08 can manage it somehow, right?

Thanks for your time,
-- Evan

Posted on Oct 30, 2009 8:47 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 31, 2009 2:58 AM in response to P4th3t1qu3

Evan,

I'll share my solution with you on two conditions. First, I'd like to see the solution you found for Excel. Second I'd like you to promise to smoke only in your car with the windows up.

With your input in Column A, the conversion expression is:

=DATE(LEFT(A,4),1,1)+RIGHT(A,3)-1

By the way, 2009 is not a leap year, and in this date format I believe the convention is that January 01, 2009 would be "2009001", so 2009055 converts to "02/24/2009", not "02/23/2009".

I don't have Numbers 08 on this computer, so my test of the expression was done on Numbers 09, but I'm pretty confident that the result will be the same.

Regards,

Jerry

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