[AccessD] Date Importing from Excel

[John Bartow]

Hi All,
I'm doing some Access work for the first time in years). It's a pretty simple little db and app. The exception being the importing of the old data from a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is a mess and that's why they finally asked me for a better solution. This is so basic that I'm just doing an Access app so they can see there is life beyond spreadsheets. 

The biggest issue is the old data - specifically all of the date fields. Each date field has dozens of records where the data won't import unless I set them to short text.

I have used queries in the past to add a date field and have the query convert the short text to dates where possible. And then I would use the new date field (where null) to find the old date text fields wouldn't convert so that I don't lose the badly formatted old date field data and can manually investigate it. Problem is none of my old DBs open in the latest access.

How would you suggest I handle the old data?

TIA,
John B