Fix dates Excel misreads in a Wild Apricot export

Wild Apricot formats exported dates with your organization’s date format. Excel uses the regional settings of your computer. When the two use a different day and month order, Excel can read a date incorrectly or keep it as text.

Find your organization’s date format

1. In the admin view, select Account from the sidebar menu.
2. Select Account details from the top menu.
3. In the Account settings section, read the Date format value.

Write this format in your reporting notes, next to the export date.

Keep the original file unchanged

Make a copy before you open the export. Do all work in the copy. Excel can convert values when it opens a CSV file, and it can save those converted values over the original text.

Import a CSV file with a set date order

Do not open the CSV file with a double-click. Use the import flow in Excel:

1. Open a blank workbook.
2. Select Data, then From Text/CSV, and select the file.
3. Select the correct delimiter and file encoding.
4. Select Transform Data.
5. For each date column, select Change Type, then Using Locale.
6. Select Date and a locale that uses the same day and month order as your organization’s date format.
7. Load the result into a new sheet.

Do not fix an ambiguous value such as 03/04/2026 by guessing. It can be March 4 or April 3. Find a value in the same column where one part is greater than 12. That value shows the order. If no such value exists, use your organization’s date format.

Repair dates already stored as text

1. Keep the source column.
2. Add a new column for the repaired date.
3. Split the text into year, month and day parts.
4. Make a date from those parts with the spreadsheet’s date function.
5. Format the result as 2026-04-03 (year-month-day), which has only one meaning.

Compare some repaired dates with the member records in Wild Apricot before you use them. Check especially the dates where both the day and the month are 12 or less.

Avoid conversion where possible

If CSV dates cause problems, try an XLS export. Wild Apricot’s help also suggests an XML export if you have trouble with the date format in Excel. The report tool reads XLS, XLSX and CSV files, but not XML.

The tool reads common date forms, such as 2026-04-03, 3 Apr 2026, Apr 3, 2026 and Excel date cells. For slash dates such as 03/04/2026, it looks for a value greater than 12 to find the order. If it cannot find one, it reads the dates as month/day/year and says so in the data-quality panel. If your dates are day/month/year, select Dates are day/month/year in the report settings. The metric definitions show which date each measure uses.

Before you import a file back

An analysis copy is not an import file. If you import a changed file into Wild Apricot, the import overwrites existing data in the imported fields, and you cannot undo it. Back up your contact database with an export first.

For CSV imports, Wild Apricot accepts only specific date formats, for example yyyy-MM-dd (2014-12-31) and dd/MM/yyyy (31/12/2014). Do not include the time of day in a date field. Read the import article for the full list before you import.

For the fields you need in the export, see export Wild Apricot members.