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Its not an excel question. Its just through excel that I upload to sql. I need to format the date in sql. As I said above it doesn't matter how its formatted in excel mysql always shows 1/1/2001.
MySQL stores dates in international yyyymmdd format. Mercifully, you cannot change that. It expects dates in such a format, but it is also a bit forgiving, ie it accepts 'yyyy-mm-dd','yyyy-m-d','yyyy/mm/dd' &c.
LOAD DATA INFILE therefore requires dates in such a format. You can fiddle using variables, but unless you know what you're doing, it's much easier to change what your spreadsheet is feedibng LOAD DATA INFILE.
The MySQL default date display format is also international, yyyy-mm-dd. To change how a particlar date value is displayed, use the MySQL Date_Format() function, documentation of which describes all arguments and formats that it understands.
PB
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