[excel] Converting unix time into date-time via excel

TLDR

=(A1/86400)+25569

...and the format of the cell should be date.

If it doesn't work for you

  • If you get a number you forgot to format the output cell as a date.
  • If you get ##### you probably don't have a real Unix time. Check your timestamps in https://www.epochconverter.com/. Try to divide your input by 10, 100, 1000 or 10000**
  • You work with timestamps outside Excel's (very extended) limits.
  • You didn't replace A1 with the cell containing the timestamp ;-p

Explanation

Unix system represent a point in time as a number. Specifically the number of seconds* since a zero-time called the Unix epoch which is 1/1/1970 00:00 UTC/GMT. This number of seconds is called "Unix timestamp" or "Unix time" or "POSIX time" or just "timestamp" and sometimes (confusingly) "Unix epoch".

In the case of Excel they chose a different zero-time and step (because who wouldn't like variety in technical details?). So Excel counts days since 24 hours before 1/1/0000 UTC/GMT. So 25569 corresponds to 1/1/1970 00:00 UTC/GMT and 25570 to 2/1/1970 00:00.

Now please note that we have 86400 seconds per day (24 hours x60 minutes each x60 seconds) and you can understand what this formula does: A1/86400 converts seconds to days and +25569 adjusts for the offset between what is time-zero for Unix and what is time-zero for Excel.

By the way DATE(1970,1,1) will helpfully return 25569 for you in case you forget all this so a more "self-documenting" way to write our formula is:

=A1/(24*60*60) + DATE(1970,1,1)

P.S.: All these were already present in other answers and comments just not laid out as I like them and I don't feel it's OK to edit the hell out of another answer.


*: that's almost correct because you should not count leap seconds

**: E.g. in the case of this question the number was number of milliseconds since the the Unix epoch.

Examples related to excel

Python: Pandas pd.read_excel giving ImportError: Install xlrd >= 0.9.0 for Excel support Converting unix time into date-time via excel How to increment a letter N times per iteration and store in an array? 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.16.0' provider is not registered on the local machine. (System.Data) How to import an Excel file into SQL Server? Copy filtered data to another sheet using VBA Better way to find last used row Could pandas use column as index? Check if a value is in an array or not with Excel VBA How to sort dates from Oldest to Newest in Excel?

Examples related to datetime

Comparing two joda DateTime instances How to format DateTime in Flutter , How to get current time in flutter? How do I convert 2018-04-10T04:00:00.000Z string to DateTime? How to get current local date and time in Kotlin Converting unix time into date-time via excel Convert python datetime to timestamp in milliseconds SQL Server date format yyyymmdd Laravel Carbon subtract days from current date Check if date is a valid one Why is ZoneOffset.UTC != ZoneId.of("UTC")?

Examples related to unix-timestamp

Converting unix time into date-time via excel Convert python datetime to timestamp in milliseconds Getting current unixtimestamp using Moment.js How to parse unix timestamp to time.Time Go / golang time.Now().UnixNano() convert to milliseconds? Get current NSDate in timestamp format MYSQL query between two timestamps How to get current time with jQuery Convert unix time to readable date in pandas dataframe How to get the unix timestamp in C#

Examples related to date-conversion

Converting unix time into date-time via excel Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string in SQL SERVER 2008 Go / golang time.Now().UnixNano() convert to milliseconds? sql server Get the FULL month name from a date How to convert a string Date to long millseconds Date and time conversion to some other Timezone in java How to get the integer value of day of week Convert one date format into another in PHP