Maintaining Formatting of Financial Periods

Overview

As is common if many reports, your report may contain Financial Periods.

Excel column showing financial period values formatted correctly as text strings such as 2024-01, 2024-02, etc.

Known Issue

When using the Velixo Copy Workbook Without Formulas feature:

Velixo ribbon showing the Copy Workbook Without Formulas button in the Tools section

Or either of the Distribution List options which remove Velixo functions from the resulting file:

Velixo Distribution List options dropdown showing the Remove Formulas option selected

Excel can reformat certain results (such as those from the FinancialPeriodList function) as either numbers or Excel dates:

Excel column showing financial period values incorrectly reformatted as numbers or Excel date serial values instead of text

Resolution

This is due to Excel behavior that looks to convert what looks like a date into a date when no other formatting is set in a cell.

To resolve this in the original report, highlight any cell(s) that Excel is re-formatting, select the Format pulldown from the Home ribbon on the Excel toolbar...

Excel Home tab Format Cells dropdown with the Text option highlighted to set the cell format to plain text

... and select Text

Now, when using Velixo features to create a workbook without Velixo functions, there will be a specific format associated with the Financial Period cells and that format will be maintained in the resulting workbook: