Why did date format of attribute in crosstable get changed to string?

[#1]

Hi,

I am relatively new to QlikView and this is my first question -- would appreciate help.

I imported into QV a crosstable from EXCEL with dates being the attribute containing the data.  Somehow, the attribute (I renamed 'WeekDate') became a string and I cannot perform any date function on it.  Example:  The date '11/25/2011' gets imported and reformated into the string '40879.000000'? 

The script looks as follows:

CrossTable(WeekDate, Sales, 7)
LOAD *

Do I need to convert WeekDate, and if so, how?

Thanking in advance for your help,

Anthony

[swuehl · Accepted solution]

Please check out this thread:

http://community.qlik.com/message/267104#267104

Regards,

Stefan

[#3]

Thank you for the prompt response and link to the discussion thread.

I was able to use the info to change my script and got the data loaded successfully.

It was very beneficial to learn the following:

"As whiteline points, all field names converted to values in the Crosstable() load will be stored as literals of texts, instead of numbers. Dates in QlikView are numeric, so you need a second load to transform the values correctly."

Thanks again,
Anthony

[justaqlikker]

Thank you Stefan and Anthony!  I was completely missing the fact that my date headers were coming in as a text/string data type.  Once I put the "Num#()" function on field in a resident load (after the CrossTable() load) everything fell into place and my date functions started working!  Thank you!