Converting an Excel date into PHP timestamp

I was recently asked by a customer to upload a large dataset extracted from their old Microsoft Office based database system into their shiny new web-based application (Built by the guys at Zypher).

The data included a lot of date fields which needed to be converted into UNIX timestamp to be used by the PHP based front-end.

We used the formula below to convert the dates, it assumes the date is in cell ‘A2’.

=(A2-DATE(1970,1,1))*86400

I hope it proves useful.