Importing Time Data

Hi,

I have some Excel data with a column of time stamps in the format "2016-06-12 08:39:12 PDT-0700". When I import into Igor it does so as text wave. How do I get it to recognize it as a time value?

Andy

Never Mind I got a work around. In Excel deleted " PDT-0700" and then Excel recognized it as numeric (it shifts the justification to right).
Looks like you've got a solution. In the past I've parsed strings like that using SplitString

Something like:
Function GetTheTimes()
    Wave /T wavewithtimes
    Variable nTimes=numpnts(wavewithtimes)
    Make/O /D /N=(nTimes) NewTimes
    String olddate
    String expr="([[:digit:]]+)\-([[:digit:]]+)\-([[:digit:]]+)T([[:digit:]]+)\:([[:digit:]]+)\:([[:digit:]]+)Z" // this was my case - need to edit for your format
    String yr,mh,dy,hh,mm,ss
    Variable i

    For(i=0; i<nTimes; i+=1)
        olddate=wavewithtimes[i]
        SplitString /E=(expr) olddate, yr,mh,dy,hh,mm,ss
        NewTimes[i]=date2secs(str2num(yr),str2num(mh),str2num(dy))+(3600*str2num(hh))+(60*str2num(mm))+str2num(ss)
    EndFor
    SetScale d 0, 0, "dat", NewTimes
    Edit NewTimes
    modifytable format=1
End