How is the date format interpreted in Tableau?
Subject: How is the date interpreted in Tableau?
While completing the Intro to Tableau course, I reached the exercise section and noticed that the date of purchase column has numbers that I can't interpret, however Tableau is able to. For example:
On the worksheet 'audiobook sales' for the column titled date of purchase, the value in one of the cells is '42935'.
On Tableau after converting the column to 'date' instead of 'number', it reads '19/07/2017'.
The transaction ID matches so I am sure that this is the same value (7553710).
Could you let me know your thoughts on this when you're free?
Thanks,
Mek
1 answers ( 0 marked as helpful)
The same as in Excel, a date is actually stored as a number. Wrap any Tableau date in the FLOAT() function and you'll see it convert to a number.