How to extract a date stamp from excel file inside

[Cruise]

@Reeza

Hi Reeza,

Thanks for your comment. I will create a new post if i can't figure it out myself in the next hour or so.

As per your inquiries,
"Date of birth" variable in excel was imported to "15MAR2014:00:00:00" DATETIME19. format in SAS. I tried below approaches so far: 

Approach1: 

date=datepart(date_of_birth);
date1=input(put(date,8.),yymmdd8.);

Result: date1 variable with lots of sporadic missing with 5 digit numbers such as: 15367. 

Approach2: 

Shifting starting point in original excel file then import.

SAS_birthdate = excel_birthdate - 21916;

Result2: The same. Bunch of numbers in the close range of 15540 here and there with huge missing. 

[Reeza]

date=datepart(date_of_birth);
format date date9.;

[Cruise]

Thank you very much. It solved the problem.

[Reeza]

Specify the RANGE option on PROC IMPORT. You can use the RANGE to specify a single cell to import each of the dates individually from the Excel file. Tedious but no real way around something like that.