Last Updated: 2024-11-23

In the Project M project, we were given PayPal data in the Excel format.

This tripped up my downstream tools. What's more, my import tools assumed the wrong timezone (i.e. UTC instead of the my computer's one or the one in the import data).

The specific issue is that Excel stores dates and time as days since 1 Jan 1900 (and as something else again on the Mac version of Excel).

Lesson:

• Don't use idiosyncatic tools for data transfer. Prefer standard tools. CSV instead of Excel
• In exports, store dates as seconds since epoch in spreadsheets, or parseable strings, or as day/month/year separate columns.