Converting Remedy/Unix Epoch Date to Dates and/or Times in Excel

Convert Epoch Date/Times in Excel

One of the more annoying things that people run into when dealing with data directly from the Remedy database is conversion of date/time strings.

Remedy – and most unix systems – uses Epoch date.  This is simply the number of seconds since January 1st 1970.

To most people this is meaningless of course – however, if you are exporting the data and pulling it into Excel it’s easy to convert it to a date or time (or both).

Imagine you have exported the data and opened it in Excel – you will have a column of integers.  Let’s say that is in A1.

If you want the time only you would put this formula into B1:

=TIME(HOUR(A1),MINUTE(A1),SECOND(A1))

To get the date you do something very similar – enter this formula:

=date(year(a2),month(a2),day(a2))

That’s it – email me with questions.