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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T08:06:31+00:00

As the title said I am bringing in a date string from a datatable

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As the title said I am bringing in a date string from a datatable with the format of “d-MMM-yy” or 27-AUG-06.

I need to convert it to a date type for sorting, but I need to keep the same format for display.

NOTE: I am using C#, .Net 2.0, and I am retyping this code so bear with me on typos

System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo dtfi;
dtfi = new System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo();
dtfi.ShortDatePattern = "d-MMM-yy";
dtfi.DateSeperator = "-";

//this is in a for loop with rowCnt being the row index/counter: loop and datatable is working fine. 
//"newRow" represents a DataRow in the new table.
// the table [row] [column] is bringing in the string date like "27-AUG-06"
//colXDate IS RECORDED AS {8/27/2006 12:00:00 AM}
DateTime colXDate = DateTime.ParseExact(inputDataTable.Rows[rowCnt]["colX"].ToString(), "d-MMM-yy", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

//@@@@ THIS NEXT LINE IS WHERE IT GIVES ME AN ERROR "String was not recognized as valid datetime."
newRow["colX"] = Convert.ToDateTime(colXDate.ToString(), dtfi);
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    SCENARIO: I am passing a datatable back as a DataGrids datasource. I am passing in a string field that is a date. I want to convert it to a date so that I can sort by it but I also want to maintain the same format that it was on the string that came in.

    ISSUE: From some of my research it seems that the DateTime type is exactly that a datatype in whatever datatable that you put it in and is not formatable. So even though I bring in an unormal string date and convert it to a datetime via the DateTime.ParseExact, when I put it into my datetime field and try to format it (newRow[“colX”] = colXDate.ToString(“d-MMM-yy”); //as Scott had above) it still goes in as a set datetime format with hours…etc.

    SOLUTION: So I resolved this by smoke and mirrors. I put 2 columns in the datatable, the first being the string format display date and the second the datetime type. On ItemDataBound I hid the datetime column (e.Item.Cells[5].Visible = false;) and then on the sort event I test for string date column (e.SortExpression == “colX”) and if it is true I sort by the hidden datetime column.

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