To import recurring holidays from an MS-Excel file, use the Import from MS-Excel menu item of the recurring holidays toolbar menu in the holidays manager.

The goal of importing recurring holidays from an Excel file is to:

•Import the holiday name, abbreviation and associated symbols.

•Supply a simplistic recurrence rule for that imported holiday (this rule will need to be manually changed later, it cannot be imported from and Excel file).

Expected Column Layout

To import recurring holidays, make sure your Excel file contains the expected information in the expected columns:

Column A	Column A should contain the date. ➢The year can be any year, only the month and day matter. Date Format  Make sure you enter a date as 1/1/2024 or 3-5-2024, not as free text. If the date you supply is not understood, it will appear as Incorrect Date Format, as shown in the image on the right, in the Date column of the preview grid at the bottom of the import from Excel dialog.
Column B	Column B should contain the abbreviation(s) of the holiday.   Any underscore character "_" (without the quotes) contained in this string will be replaced by a non-breaking space and any tilde character "~" (without the quotes) contained in this string will be replaced by a normal space.
Column C	Column C should contain the symbol(s) of the holiday.
Column D	Column D contains the holiday name.   You can include special character markers, such as &t or &s or &c, to include tabulations or returns in the holiday names.   Using additional columns   Generally, the columns E-F-G-... to the right of column D are left empty, but there are cases when you might want to use these columns. Multiple Holidays Sets in the same Excel File If you have 2 or more lists of holidays in the same Excel file, then you can specify, for each importation, which column to use, with column values starting at 4, which corresponds to the default column D. If, for example, you had specified column 5 in middle section of the import from Excel dialog, then the importation would use the text of column E as the names of the imported holidays. ➢The importation could then be repeated using column D or G as the source for another holidays set. Multiline Holiday Name Alternatively, you could have each holiday made-up of two or more sections that you want to differentiate as they are being imported. In the example on the right, taken from the middle section of the import from Excel dialog, the importation of each holiday will add the text from all the columns, separated by the &c hard return code, beginning with column D, until it reached the  first blank column. Multiple Formats Holiday Names The number of columns imported can be different for each recurring holiday being imported; the concatenation of the columns text will continue for each row until there is a blank value for that specific row. For example, the above text in the Excel file's columns would be imported as follows. Note how the HTML tags and special characters can be placed in their own column, if the formatting has a recurring structure, or it can be mixed in the middle of any of the columns.

Importation Procedure

To import recurring holidays from an Excel file, prepared as described above:

1.Select the holidays set into which you want to import.

2.Use the holidays toolbar menu of the recurring holidays tab of the holidays manager, and select the Import from MS-Excel menu item.

3.At the top of the import from Excel dialog, select an Excel file (both the XLSX and the XLS file extensions are accepted).

the Excel file contents preview

4.Use the preview to specify at which row to start the importation (as shown in the example on the right, make sure you do not include title headers in the rows selected for import).

➢IMPORTANT: If the dates you see in the preview are 4 years earlier than what you are expecting to see, then this is due to the way the Excel file was saved on the Macintosh.

5.Decide if you want to import the contents of only one specific column, or of all non-blank columns (in which case you should specify the text to be used to separate each column's text, as shown in the examples of the previous section covering Column D).

6.Click on the import button. Once importation is complete, a dialog will come up informing you of the number of recurring holidays successfully imported.

Once the entire process is completed, that you must verify the proper rule for each holiday imported, either from a list given to you, or using the Holidays Rules Wizard, since a holiday appearing in the imported Excel file as "April 2, 2025", will be imported with the fixed date recurrence rule "every year on the day of April 2", although this rule may actually be based on Easter.

Topic 169900, last updated on 04-Nov-2023