Getting date from excel with xlrd as text in textelement?

Question

when I run the script below in arcmap in the python window the date gets print however I get the following error:Parsing error SyntaxError: invalid syntax (line 19) the date isn't showing as text in textelement"survey"

what am i missing here?

from datetime import date,datetime,time
from xlrd import open_workbook,xldate_as_tuple
from arcpy import mapping 

book = open_workbook(r"C:\Users\robert\Downloads\Hyrografie_2014_projectenlijst.xls")#excelfile

sheet = book.sheet_by_index(0)#eerste(0)blad

x =  int(arcpy.GetParameterAsText(0) ) #rij 3(0,1,2)!
survey = xldate_as_tuple(sheet.cell(x,6).value,book.datemode)#laatste opname

print date(*survey[:3])

mxd = mapping.MapDocument("current") 
ellist = arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd,"TEXT_ELEMENT") 

for el in ellist:
 if el.name == "survey":
  el.text = survey#line19

Answer 1

The text property from the TextElement (arcpy.mapping) is expecting a string and the survey variable is a tuple. Try using str() to convert the datatype.

for el in ellist:
    if el.name == "survey":
        el.text = str(survey)