Hi support team, sorry maybe this is a repeat question about the difference in submission hours between web and excel, what I want to ask is why this can be different, while the web and excel that I do are in Indonesia. How do I make the submission hours in excel the same as the submission hours on the web?
Thank you,
are you running Excel on Mac or PC? I suspect you are seeing your default datetime display format, in Excel, which looks like it is dropping the time componentsā¦
If you want to be sure, export your Kobo dataset as a raw CSV text file, and make sure that all your _submission_time entries look something like ā2024-06-19T00:00:00.000+12:00ā (or thereabouts). If so, then it is just Excel reformatting the date for its own display purposes.
Yes, I use a laptop (Windows), Iām just confused because the submission time on the web is 3 pm while in Excel it reads 8 am, even though the enumerators started filling out the form at 1 pm and finished at 1.30 pm. time component if i bring it up it still reads 8 am
So the " +12:00" at the end of the timestamp above indicates the timezone, because times are basically ambiguous unless you specify a timezone; eg its Monday 7:30pm right now where Iām writing this, but Iām guessing its not Monday 7:30pm where you are reading itā¦ 
However, the +12:00 may or may not reflect the physical timezone you happen to actually be in - even more so on the web [do you happen to know what timezone the webserver happens to be hosted in? probably notā¦]. Which is to say, timestamps can be pretty well be guaranteed to accurately persist the instant in universal time when something happened, but that may or may not reflect what a clock happens to display at that particular location.
Whenever you wish to display a timestamp, you kinda need to be somewhat cognisant about what the reference timezone should be, and convert it if necessary. Again, a lot of timestamps are recorded against UTC, but unless you happen to be sitting on the prime meridian, your local time is probably any number of hours (or even a day!) off. Hopefully that explains a little what you might be seeing. FWIW datetimes are a āhardā.
What does the raw data in your CSV have?
Can this time difference also be caused by the location of the server and the user being in a different location? Because the server will definitely read the local time zone where the server is located (correct me if Iām wrong)
The raw data in csv/excel is currently diverse, only what Iām observing is the submission time
Quite possibly. If you add an end question to your form (see metadata) you can see the timestamp the client thinks it finished the form (and presumably submitted it shortly thereafter).
Because the server will definitely read the local time zone where the server is located
Not necessarily. A lot of servers are quite often configured to record timestamps in UTC format, not the timezone they happen to be physically located in. Thatās why youāll often see a ā+00:00ā or āZā (aka āZulu timeā) at the end of them. For more than you ever want to know, see ISO 8601 - Wikipedia
