If the data does not contain of the ‘ character at beginning, it is so easy to convert them become Date value, by using Format Cells feature in Excel. Obviously, it took too long time if I have to remove first the ‘ character for those thousand records, and then do formatting the cell column. Since the date have the ‘ character, then it will take a long time to remove that character one by one. Even if you want to make the special function to remove this.

So, before I export all about those sixteen thousand rows, I analyzed, which one the best way to do this. Well, finally, I think it is better to convert first those 5 digits numeral data directly to the real Date Value data without having to remove the ‘ character. I also have to convert this data become the Date format and order: year-month-date, such as “yyyy-MM-dd”. This “38353″ value should be like 2005-01-01.

Actually, the solution that I made for this, is only by using CDate() function belongs to VBA (Visual Basic Application) that exists in Excel file. Unfortunately, you cannot use formula =CDATE() function directly in the Excel WorkSheet Cell. So, I created this function below from Visual Basic Editor in the Excel file and run it from Macro Excel:

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Public Function ConvertDateStringToDateValue()
  With Sheet1
    For i = 2 To 16000 'first row is the header column, so we start from the 2nd row
      If IsDate(.Cells(i, 7)) Then 'check whether the Date value in the 7th column
        'among those 16,000 rows, not all rows contain of the DateString
        'so, if the Cell value is a real Date, do nothing here...
      Else 'Else, if the cell value not a Date type
        'let's convert the Cell here, and put the result in to the 11th column
        .Cells(i, 11).Value = Format(CDate(.Cells(i, 7).Value), "yyyy-MM-dd")
      End If
    Next i
  End With
End Function

From the code above, we can see that the 5 digits numeral value located on the seventh column or column G, meanwhile the real Date Value I put on the eleventh column or column K in Excel file.

The conclusion? Well, the solution I made is by using CDate() and Format() function in Visual Basic Application (VBA) from Visual Basic editor belongs to the Excel file. We cannot use the Excel formula directly on the Sheet.  It took only moreless about a few seconds to convert the 5 digits numeral to the Date Value. Meanwhile, the export process itself from the Excel file into the Access database file took only a few seconds, too.  I just used the Get External Data from the Access database file from menu: “File -> Get External Data -> Import…”.

Thanks to the CDate() and Format() functions that available in VBA Excel, and also to the Get External Data feature that available in Microsoft Access.