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Trainer explains Excel timezone pitfalls, copy-data-link in UTC, and fixes for field-sample saving errors

Interagency NFDRS/FEMs Transition Webinar · August 12, 2025

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Summary

Trainer told users the copy-data-link works in UTC to avoid Excel’s automatic timezone conversions, explained techniques in Power Query to keep raw Zulu timestamps, and described a fix to default negative longitudes to prevent 'site not savable' errors when adding field samples.

During a technical Q&A the presenter clarified how FEMs handles timestamps and how Excel/Power Query can silently convert local station standard time to a user's local time, producing offsets of 6–8 hours when the copy-data-link is used.

Asked whether downloads use mountain time or local time, the presenter replied that downloads are in local station time by default but the copy-data-link is provided only for UTC to avoid Excel automatically converting timestamps. "It's always in local station time," the presenter said, and explained that Excel's auto-detection of data types will convert timestamps to a user's local timezone unless the user imports in UTC or disables the 'detect data types' step in Power Query.

The presenter demonstrated how removing the 'Change Type' applied step in Power Query returns raw Zulu/UTC timestamps and recommended importing in UTC when using the copy-data-link so Excel does not re-convert timestamps behind the scenes. He noted the default behavior aims to prevent users from unknowingly being 6–8 hours off in their data.

On field sampling, the presenter acknowledged a bug where users attempting to add a site sometimes omitted the negative sign on longitude, causing a "site not savable" error. The team will default longitude to negative for most sites (except locations such as Guam or American Samoa) and has fixed navigation that previously produced a blank page when adding subsamples. The presenter asked units that can reproduce the error to share test cases so developers can replicate and resolve the bug.