Timeline Data

A timeline can be created from a single column containing temporal data in supported 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

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

Date formats

Microreact can interpret several date formats correctly, based on Unicode Technical Standard #35. These formats include 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

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