topic Re: Dates not being formatted in App Development

Dates not being formatted

stascher — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 21:14:32 GMT

Hello,

I have a table of strings of the following format:

'2017-05-16'

'2018-04-27'

I need to convert them to real date values. When I use date#([input_date],'YYYY-MM-DD') as [output_date], they appear in my Table objects as numbers:

42871

43217

When I try to re-format them with date(date#([input_date],'YYYY-MM-DD'),'YYYY-MM-DD') as [output_date]

they appear in my Table object as question marks:

Yes, I can fix this by putting date([output_date],'YYYY-MM-DD') in my Table columns, but why should I have to? The use of date#() or date(date#()) as above should accomplish what I need without adding date() to every column in my Tables. Am I doing something wrong?

Regards,

Steven

Re: Dates not being formatted

Chanty4u — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 04:12:31 GMT

Try this.

Date(Date#(PurgeChar([input_date],' '),'YYYY-MM-DD'),'YYYY-MM-DD') as [output_date]

Re: Dates not being formatted

BrunPierre — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 07:34:58 GMT

I’d look at two things. First, there might be trailing spaces or invisible characters in the source data. Try cleaning it like this:

Date(Date#(Trim([input_date]), 'YYYY-MM-DD'), 'YYYY-MM-DD') as [output_date]

Second, make sure your global date format matches the data by setting:

SET DateFormat='YYYY-MM-DD';

Re: Dates not being formatted

Amit_Prajapati — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 06:46:13 GMT

Hi @stascher ,

I've encountered similar issues when working with date fields—especially when trailing spaces or invisible characters in the source data cause unexpected behavior, as @BrunPierre also pointed out.

To resolve this, it's best to apply trimming or with PurgeChar and enforce the required format explicitly:

date(Date#(Trim([input_date]), 'YYYY-MM-DD'), 'YYYY-MM-DD')