Fun Little Weird Date Thing

This is a lot like my last post, but not exactly...

I have a table with some really strange fields. They all have 4-8 digits, and those digits stand for the date--but not for simple mmddyy. This is much more complicated than that. Each 4 or 2-digit number set stands for something different.

|___START____|_____END____|
|___196303___|___199912___|
|___192603___|___199910___|
|___193101___|___199812___|
|___195606___|___200112___|
|___192801___|___1999_____|

is a sample of the numbers in the fields. Here is the way the website says to define them:

NOTE: The seventh and eighth columns of each document describe the initial and most recent coverage dates using the SICI standard, which defines standard month codes for seasonal and quarterly issues. (A full list of the month codes used for seasonal and quarterly issues appears below.) Dates may appear as a year (1989), a year and month (197601), or a year, month, and day (19331229). Sometimes the format for initial and most recent coverage dates may differ due to changes in publication frequency over the history of the journal. For example, coverage may start with an annual issue (1898) but finish with a monthly issue (199912) or coverage may start with a monthly issue (193002) but finish with a supplemental issue containing no corresponding month (1972).

Month Codes Used in JSTOR Delimited Lists


01=January02=February03=March04=April05=May06=June07=July08=August09=September10=October11=November12=December20=Winter (when it appears at the beginning of a year)21=Spring22=Summer23=Fall24=Winter (when it appears at the end of a year)25=Early Spring26=Late Spring27=Early Fall28=Late Fall29=Early Summer30=Late Summer31=1st quarter32=2nd quarter33=3rd quarter34=4th quarterSo, if it's a 6 digit number, that's going to be 4 for the year, and 2 for one of the codes above.

If it's an 8 digit number, it's going to be 4 for the year, 2 for the month, and 2 for the day.

If it's a 4 digit number, it's just 4 for the year.

There are 665 of these, and I'll need to update them each time I download a new version of the file. So.... can anyone help me? If I could get the numbers into separate cells (at least temporarily), I could do a find and replace and add my final results back together in one cell when it's finished. I would want something that would put the first 4 digits into a cell, then the first 2 digits of what's left into a cell, and then the last two digits of what's left into another cell. I don't mind running 3 different queries.

Thanks,
Siena