A date field exports/imports its data in human-readable date formats, and then converts them to UNIX timestamps for storage in the database. It will have a hard time with your dates as they are because the format isn’t consistent and two-number years are prone to errors.
What I suggest you do is create a spreadsheet that processes the CSV into a format that will work well for Participants Database. What the spreadsheet can do for you is translate your date strings into a consistent, parseable format. I usually do that by having the imported dates in a “dummy” column (that is, one that won’t be imported) that serves as the data source for the real date column. Then you can use a formula to convert the input date format to a suitable output date format.
Once you have the data conditioned, export that into a CSV to be imported into Participants Database. You can use the same spreadsheet over and over if you set it up right.
A good, non-ambiguous format is something like “June 3, 2016” or “06-03-2016” ( I know the second can be ambiguous, but PHP assumes the month value is first.)
New topics are good because it helps others find useful information.
Thank your for your time and recommendations.
Turns out that I am receiving an XLS file. Why the dates are formatted the way they are is beyond me. But at any rate, I found I’m able to simply select the 4 columns that contain dates re-format them – I opted for “January 1, 2016” as you suggested.
After that workflow consists of replacing the top row of Plain English Headings with under_score_headings via copy and paste.
PDB field settings are appropriately set to ‘date’.
The import works great. Date columns sort accordingly.
