Sorting dates in an acknowledgment

Adria,

Your problem is likely that the dates you are looking at are in text format.  If you try to sort text dates you get the wrong sort order.  You need to convert those dates to numbers and display the numbers as dates.  Once dates are represented in numerical format sorting should work just fine.  There are many ways to do this. 

One way to write this formula =datevalue(G2). Where G2 is the cell with the date as text.  This will give you a number that does not look like a date.  However if you format the number as a date.  It will look like a date.  Then the dates sort just fine.

Here is a post or two in the internet that suggest some other solutions.

http://superuser.com/questions/817110/unable-to-get-excel-to-recognise-date-in-column

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Convert-dates-stored-as-text-to-dates-d4c6d605-c2df-44fb-a8bc-3cd55f316301

Bottom line is that Tessitura Reports produce text based dates.  Excel wants numbers formatted as dates in order to sort in the correct order.

--Tom

…

718.724.8135

tbrown@BAM.org

From: Tessitura Ticketing Forum [mailto:forums-ticketing@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Mark Wladika
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2016 1:01 PM
To: Thomas Brown <tbrown@bam.org>
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Ticketing Forum] Sorting dates in an acknowledgment

XSL only has sort on text, number, qname (not sure what qname is.)

http://www.w3schools.com/xml/ref_xsl_el_sort.asp

Adria,

Your problem is likely that the dates you are looking at are in text format.  If you try to sort text dates you get the wrong sort order.  You need to convert those dates to numbers and display the numbers as dates.  Once dates are represented in numerical format sorting should work just fine.  There are many ways to do this. 

One way to write this formula =datevalue(G2). Where G2 is the cell with the date as text.  This will give you a number that does not look like a date.  However if you format the number as a date.  It will look like a date.  Then the dates sort just fine.

Here is a post or two in the internet that suggest some other solutions.

http://superuser.com/questions/817110/unable-to-get-excel-to-recognise-date-in-column

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Convert-dates-stored-as-text-to-dates-d4c6d605-c2df-44fb-a8bc-3cd55f316301

Bottom line is that Tessitura Reports produce text based dates.  Excel wants numbers formatted as dates in order to sort in the correct order.

--Tom

…

718.724.8135

tbrown@BAM.org

From: Tessitura Ticketing Forum [mailto:forums-ticketing@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Mark Wladika
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2016 1:01 PM
To: Thomas Brown <tbrown@bam.org>
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Ticketing Forum] Sorting dates in an acknowledgment

XSL only has sort on text, number, qname (not sure what qname is.)

http://www.w3schools.com/xml/ref_xsl_el_sort.asp