"Empty" dates are somewhat oxymoronic... Such magic dates appear also when upsizing, so perhaps common code stems from constants in ODBC or other code bases.
To your question: for trusty Excel97 close, but no cigar at least in GUI.
Excel shows it as (strictdate translated) ^19000100
Format empty cell as date, reference it in another to verify
Earlier "date entries" do not exist for excel97 - they are treated as strings.
Date arithmetic fails as well


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>I am importing data from an excel into a DBF (using VFPxWorkBookXLSX.VCT). A column that has in some rows value that looks like DateTime. In some other rows it looks empty. When I look at the value retrieved from an empty cell it shows (in Messagebox) as "12/30/1899". Is this how Excel - internally keeps the DateTime but shows empty?
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>TIA