Why does EasyMorph convert a Zip Code to a Date? How do I get it to convert back? Converting to text doesn’t do it.
Hi @SonicAnvil and welcome to the Community!
Some zip codes may look like Excel dates and EasyMorph may mistakenly apply the date formatting. Just change the format back to numbers.
Thank you but that is not happening. The Num button is grayed out and when I change it to 1000 it doesn’t change anything.
Can you post a screenshot of your data and the formatting bar? I’m not sure I understand the problem.
I just did a simple import to test the product. This is my first time trying it and it looks like it might be a good option for us.
You’re trying to change number formatting for a column that is already text, that’s why it doesn’t work. The dotted border around actions shows the current action which is “Convert data type” in your screenshot and the action already converted that column into text.
Apply number formatting for the column right at the “Import from Excel” action. See my screenshot below:
Then if you need to make the zip codes text values, apply the “Convert data types” action with the “Everything to text” mode.
Dates in EasyMorph are just formatted numbers, like in Excel. See this tutorial topic on data types in EasyMorph: Expressions | EasyMorph
I was just curious why it converted by default from a simple number in the form of a zip code to a date. Thanks!
In EasyMorph, as in Excel, dates are numbers that are formatted as dates. Such a number date represents the number of days since January 1st, 1900. For instance, 42680 corresponds to November 6th, 2016 because there are 42680 days from January 1st, 1900 to that date.
There is an auto-detection mechanism in EasyMorph that tries to detect if numbers are dates and, when possible, apply the date formatting to numbers. Apparently, the mechanism mistakenly assumed that this particular list of zip codes in the 30K-40K range are dates. If the zip codes were in, say, 70-80K range, then it wouldn’t try to format them as dates.
Good to know! I had to reload it because it would not let me change the data type.