Question

User Export Date Format

  • 2 September 2020
  • 4 replies
  • 125 views

When I import the User Export into Google sheets, the dates are not formattable.

The formats are different, not consistent.  And, they download as text. (see below)

 

What I would like to see is just the month/date/year in the US format.  No time.

Now, even after running additional data cleaning steps to remove the time stamp, I cannot format the data because of the dash format.  That requires additional cleaning.


Can this be solved?

 

thank you 

John

 

 


4 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge +3

Thanks John for sharing your challenge with us!

I just tried to reproduce it by adding a user export from this community into a Google Sheet, and I cannot reproduce the issue of inconsistent formatting:

 

But I think I recall observing something alike. I will ask my colleagues from support to look into your specific case and fix this.

We are currently investigating again how to improve the formatting in exports in a way that both EU and US communities produce exports that share a universal formatting, so hopefully we can tackle this soon. Nevertheless, we have to be quite careful with changes here as any sudden changes to the date formatting can cause trouble with the analytics / reporting that Community Managers are doing each month.

We will get back to you on the issue of inconsistent formatting as soon as possible, so that you don’t have to adjust the export manually each time!

Thanks Julian.  The current date format makes this export basically unusable for us, so I would appreciate a resolution.  

 

John

 

@Lotte Cohen 

Hi @johndentrollworks, there is a workaround for this discussed in this topic, its the 2nd last comment. This could help you get the data you need until there is a better solution

Hi John, yes makes sense that it is hard to use export data when it is not in the right format. The work around Shane tipped is a good short term solution. Support will look into a more sustainable fix here and get back to you asap. 

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