# Changed date to string format read csv file

**URL:** <https://community.n8n.io/t/changed-date-to-string-format-read-csv-file/11333>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Created:** [February 10, 2022, 9:04am UTC](https://community.n8n.io/t/changed-date-to-string-format-read-csv-file/11333 "2022-02-10T09:04:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bakarali](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/n8n/user_avatar/community.n8n.io/bakarali/32/9312_2.png) [@bakarali](https://community.n8n.io/u/bakarali)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2022, 9:04am UTC](https://community.n8n.io/t/changed-date-to-string-format-read-csv-file/11333/1 "2022-02-10T09:04:15Z")

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## Describe the issue

After reading CSV/xlsx from local the dates are changed automatically from date formate to string(2022-01-01 to 44562).

## What is the error message (if any)?

## Please share the workflow

## Share the output returned by the last node

 ![image](https://europe1.discourse-cdn.com/n8n/original/2X/1/19b66bf738ee91899e2281ee66430466b2b15a4e.png)

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**Author:** ![MutedJam](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/n8n/user_avatar/community.n8n.io/mutedjam/32/70851_2.png) [@MutedJam](https://community.n8n.io/u/MutedJam)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2022, 2:48pm UTC](https://community.n8n.io/t/changed-date-to-string-format-read-csv-file/11333/2 "2022-02-10T14:48:10Z")

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Hi @bakarali, that’s technically the value used by Excel and many compatible spreadsheet applications. Unfortunately, there’s no built in feature in n8n to parse these values yet, but you could easily implement such a conversion yourself. Check out this example:

> [@Date serial number to normal date](http://community.n8n.io/t/date-serial-number-to-normal-date/10891/4):
>
> Many thanks! Looking at these number I assume this is the data format used by Microsoft Excel? Unfortunately, n8n doesn’t have a built in option to convert these. If you control the source sheet, you could explicitly store these values as texts rather than date values. If that’s not an option and you need to convert these values in n8n, you could use a [Set](https://docs.n8n.io/nodes/n8n-nodes-base.set/) node and an expression like {{new Date(Math.round($json["Created at"] - 25569) \* 86400 \* 1000)}} (found [here](https://stackoverflow.com/a/22352911)). This would convert the Excel…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bakarali](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/n8n/user_avatar/community.n8n.io/bakarali/32/9312_2.png) [@bakarali](https://community.n8n.io/u/bakarali)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2022, 11:24am UTC](https://community.n8n.io/t/changed-date-to-string-format-read-csv-file/11333/3 "2022-02-11T11:24:00Z")

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Thanks @MutedJam