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Loading a CSV in Excel

You may want to open a CSV export of your timeline in Excel so you can edit it. To download one, click the Share button above your timeline, then the Spreadsheet item.

Before you go that route, export the timeline as an Excel file instead: in that same Spreadsheet Export dialog, set File Type to Excel (.xlsx) rather than Comma Separated Values (.csv). Excel files do not have the problem described below.

The Problem: Excel automatically reformats dates

If you open a CSV file in Excel, it converts the start_date and end_date columns into dates of its own.

That changes the date format, which can cause problems when you import the CSV back into Preceden.

A CSV export opened in Excel where the start_date column reads 1-Feb-20, while the same event in Preceden reads Feb 01, 2020

The Fix: Manually import the CSV into Excel

Opening the file directly leaves Excel to guess every column type. Importing it instead lets you say exactly how each column should be treated:

  1. Create a new blank spreadsheet

  2. Go to File > Import

  3. Specify that you want to import a CSV file

    Excel's Import dialog with CSV file selected as the type of file to import

  4. Select the CSV file you downloaded from Preceden

  5. Tell Excel the file is Delimited

    This means each column is separated by a particular character, commas in this case:

    Step 1 of Excel's Text Import Wizard with Delimited selected and a preview of the exported CSV below it

  6. Choose Comma as the delimiter

    Step 2 of the wizard with Comma checked as the delimiter and the preview now split into columns

  7. Select the start_date column and set its column data format to Text

    Step 3 of the wizard with the start_date column highlighted in the preview and Text chosen as its column data format

  8. Do the same for the end_date column

    Step 3 of the wizard again, with the end_date column highlighted and also set to Text

  9. Click Finish

    If Excel asks you where you want to put the data, you can either select Existing Sheet or New Sheet.

    Excel's Import Data dialog asking where to put the data, with Existing sheet selected

Excel now displays the start_date and end_date columns exactly as they are formatted in Preceden itself:

The imported sheet with start_date and end_date left as text, so Feb 01, 2020 and Feb 15, 2020 appear exactly as Preceden wrote them

Now you can edit those values without worrying that Preceden won't be able to read them when you re-import the file.

When you are done, save the sheet and import it back into your timeline. Leave the event_id column as it is: that is how the import knows to update your existing events instead of adding a copy of each one.

If what you actually want is to chart the timeline inside Excel rather than in Preceden, see our step-by-step guide to creating a timeline graph in Excel.