[SOLVED] Laravel excel maatwebsite 3.1 import, date column in excel cell returns as unknown format number. How to solve this?

Laravel excel maatwebsite 3.1 import, date column in excel cell returns as unknown format number. How to solve this?

By using Maatwebsite/Laravel-Excel version 3.1 to import excel sheet, here I faced an issue date time column of the excel sheet returns unknown number. How to solve this? Example : Consider Cell value "29/07/1989" and returns as "32178" when import.

Solution

The numbers come from excel itself, dates stored in excel as numeric values. http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm

For Laravel framework 5.6 and maatwebsite/excel package version 3.1, to convert date from excel numbers to normal date format, this function PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Shared\Date::excelToDateTimeObject($dateFromExcel) can be used. It accepts integer(excel date) and returns DateTime object.

More information can be found here https://github.com/Maatwebsite/Laravel-Excel/issues/1832

From this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/55139981/9133724