# Timeline Data

A timeline can be created from a single column containing temporal data in supported [formats ](#date-formats)(e.g. yyyy-MM-dd) or from multiple columns specifying the time parts (i.e. year column, month column, day column).

## Column options

### One date column, specifying `Temporal Data Column`

![](/files/TWslB0OsfjnzEnb9lIn4)

### Three date part columns, specifying `Year Column`, `Month Column`, and `Day Column`.

![](/files/6DocMXG5E6yrT4Y8ZHe0)

## Date formats

Microreact can interpret several date formats correctly, based on [Unicode ](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-dates.html#Date_Field_Symbol_Table\))Technical Standard #35. [These formats include](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-dates.html#table-date-field-symbol-table) the following. Note that capital Y and capital D are also acceptable and are automatically converted to lowercase and treated as lowercase; this adaptation was included to allow backwards-compatibility with Moment.js formats.

* yyyy-MM-dd (e.g. 2022-01-20) **THIS IS THE PREFERRED FORMAT (ISO 8601)**
* yyyy-M-d (e.g. 2022-1-5)
* dd/MM/yyyy (e.g. 20/01/2022)
* yyyy/M/d (e.g. 2022/1/20)
* M/d/yyyy (e.g. 1/20/2022)
* MMMM dd, yyyy (e.g. January 20, 2022)
* MMM dd, yyyy (e.g. Jan 20, 2022)
* MMMM ddo, yyyy (e.g. January 20th, 2022)
* MMM ddo, yyyy (e.g. Jan 20th, 2022)

### Troubleshooting

Note some that data coming from other programs may be encoded in a way that is inaccessible to Microreact. For example, a custom datetime format in Excel may display within Excel as "2022-08-16 15:30" but may display in Microreact as "44789.64632".

Possible ways to fix misinterpreted dates:

* In external program, save file as CSV, then open in a text editor to verify proper formatting
* In external program, set the column format as text instead of date
* In external program, use ISO 8601 dates (yyyy-MM-dd) and set column date format accordingly
* **Reformat the dates using** [**Data-flo**](https://github.com/microreact/docs/blob/main/instructions/creating-a-microreact-project/broken-reference/README.md)\*\*\*\*

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