In order for Microsoft‘s Excel spreadsheet to recognize the set of values for a column as dates, those values must be stored as a number of days. For example, to export the date December 26, 2006, to an Excel spreadsheet, you should export the number 37,066, not a date value like 12/26/2006 or 2006-12-26. However, due to an acknowledged defect in Excel, be aware of the following.

Even though Excel claims that 01/01/1900 equates to Day 1, for most purposes it is necessary to actually use 12/31/1899 as Day 1. Otherwise, a one-day discrepancy will occur when converting

I had to log into Service Tools the other day to do some hardware configuration stuff but the password didn’t work. Someone accidentally had tried to log in and disabled the password. How do you get around this?

–Mike

Mike, you can follow these steps to change the password:

1. On the AS/400, log onto a session as QSECOFR. It will not work with any other profile.
2. At a command line, type CHGDSTPWD (Change IBM Service Tools Password) and on the Password Parameter type *DEFAULT. Press Enter.
3. On the front of your AS/400, you need to change the mode of the

System i5 software doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It cooperates and cohabitates with other servers, triggering cross-platform processes that kick off alerts, update files and Web sites, and move information across the enterprise. Unfortunately, i5/OS inter-server communication can sometimes break down in unexpected ways. This week, I will provide a checklist of common communication breakdowns that can affect how your System i5 machine functions in a cross-server world.

There are three common scenarios for cross-server processing between a System i5, iSeries, or an older AS/400 and a companion server–such as a Windows or Linux machine or even an application running