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Handling Excel Date Formats in Gantt Charts

Strategy Gantt
Auto-Detection
ISO
2026-02-13
US
02/13/2026
EU
13/02/2026
Dots
13.02.2026
Written
Feb 13, 2026
Parsed Result
2026-02-13
2026-02-13
2026-02-13
2026-02-13
2026-02-13

One of the most common issues when creating Gantt charts from spreadsheet data is inconsistent date formatting. Your Excel file might use "MM/DD/YYYY" while your colleague's uses "DD.MM.YYYY". Strategy Gantt handles this automatically, but understanding how it works helps you get better results.

Supported Date Formats

Strategy Gantt auto-detects these common formats:

  • YYYY-MM-DD — ISO standard (2026-02-13)
  • MM/DD/YYYY — US format (02/13/2026)
  • DD/MM/YYYY — European format (13/02/2026)
  • DD.MM.YYYY — European with dots (13.02.2026)
  • MMM DD, YYYY — Written format (Feb 13, 2026)

Tips for Clean Imports

  1. Be consistent — use the same date format across your entire spreadsheet.
  2. Avoid mixed formats — if one column uses MM/DD and another uses DD/MM, the auto-detection may misinterpret ambiguous dates like 03/04/2026.
  3. Use ISO dates when possible — YYYY-MM-DD is unambiguous and always parsed correctly.

What Happens with Ambiguous Dates?

When a date like "03/04/2026" could be either March 4th or April 3rd, Strategy Gantt examines the full column to determine the most likely format. If all other dates in the column clearly use MM/DD, it will interpret this one the same way.

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