I have dates in excel in the form MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm. When I try to import them into Talend it changes to a format such as "Sat Dec 24 15:32:00 EST 2016" for example. However, I want to output the dates in the original format from the excel input file, but can't because the format was changed. Help please?
OK let sort us something....
A Date is a Date and a Date HAS NO INTERNAL FORMAT!
A format is only be used if you want to transform a textual representation into a Date and vise versa. Excel has actually not a date type. Excel uses an internal number + a format to persists date value. All databases and the Java Date object are binary representation of a Date and do not need any formats.
If you see such a string like yours, this means you see the default format pattern of Java to print a Date. It has nothing to do with the Date value itself.
If you read in your schema the date column with a Date typed field and send this content into a database, you will have the correct value in the table. If you write this field content into a text file, the schema Date pattern will be applied to the Date to print the value in the given format. If you have no pattern in your schema, the default Java ways to print a Date object will be used -> this is what you have got.
