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Importing Excel to Numbers

I have seen this problem discussed but sadly I have no idea what the posters were talking about! Can anyone explain a workaround in very simple language?

I send my spreadsheet to my book-keeper every month - she sends it back - this has been fine for 2 years. This last year when it was returned all my dates were changed to numbers. I can't change them back into dates. and I can't seem to reformat it either. The only way is to go back through ALL my invoices and re-enter all the dates again. I did this last month - all fine - but it came back from the book-keeper with the dates replaced by numbers again. She uses Excel and I have Numbers. Why was it okay in the past and is now all messed up and what can I do about it??


iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.4

Posted on Aug 21, 2021 7:13 AM

Reply
1 reply

Aug 21, 2021 1:39 PM in response to Levelonion

Levelonion wrote:

Why was it okay in the past and is now all messed up and what can I do about it??


I have no idea why it worked in the past but not now. You should consider giving feedback to Apple via Numbers > Provide Numbers Feedback in your menu.


But here's one thing you can do about it. Select the cells where the dates show as numbers and run the script below. This requires no knowledge of AppleScript, just how to copy-paste, select and click.


set startdate to date "Monday, January 1, 1900 at 12:00:00 AM"

tell application "Numbers" to tell front document
	tell active sheet
		tell (first table whose class of selection range is range)
			repeat with c in (get selection range)'s cells
				set value of c to startdate + ((value of c) - 2) * days
			end repeat
		end tell
	end tell
end tell


  1. Copy-paste the script into Script Editor (in Applications > Utilities)
  2. The first time, make sure Script Editor is listed and checked at System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility.
  3. Select the cells where the dates now appear as numbers.
  4. Click the <run> button in Script Editor.


That's it! It takes less than a minute.


Save the script for use the next time. You could even place it in the script menu.


Then it will take just a few seconds.


SG

Importing Excel to Numbers

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