How to pre-process excel date columns to iso 8601 before pandas.to_datetime()
- Step 1Export the Excel data with date columns — Download the .xlsx with the mixed-format date column.
- Step 2Standardise to ISO 8601 — Upload and run. Every parseable date is rewritten as yyyy-MM-dd.
- Step 3Load into pandas — pd.read_excel('clean.xlsx') and pd.to_datetime(df['date'], format='%Y-%m-%d') runs without errors.
Frequently asked questions
Does ISO 8601 work with all pandas date parsing operations?+
Yes. ISO 8601 (yyyy-MM-dd) is pandas' preferred format. format='%Y-%m-%d' is unambiguous and parses without inference overhead.
What if some date cells contain time components (2024-01-12 14:30)?+
chrono-node preserves the time component. The output will be '2024-01-12T14:30:00'. Use pd.to_datetime(df['date'], format='ISO8601') to handle both.
Should I run the Format Inspector before or after the Date Standardizer?+
Run the Format Inspector first to identify which columns have text-stored dates. Then run the Date Standardizer on those specific columns.
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