Question

Can someone help me to format this.
in my textbox (The date is 10222012)

the output should be (The date is 10/22/2012)
the text should be still there
thank you

Answer 1

A couple of approaches off the top of my head.

If the text is coming from one variable, for example:

Dim MyText As String = "The date is 10222012"

Then you can use String functions to get the date (assuming it is always 8 characters, which can be a dangerous assumption), format it and stick it back in:

Dim MyDate As String = CType(MyText.Substring(MyText.Length - 8), DateTime).ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")

MyText = MyText.Substring(0, MyText.Length - 8) & MyDate

If on the other hand the date is in a separate variable, say a DateTime variable, you can do this:

Dim MyDateFormatted As String = MyDate.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy")

There are other ways to do this. The key here is to get the date and convert it to the format you want via the DateTime.ToString Method (String) method, where the format string in the parantheses tells what format to use.

EDITED

That’s what I get for not trying the code out first…if the string “10222012” isn’t recognized as a valid format, there’s another way to do this:

Dim MyText As String = dRecord.Rows(i).Item(iCount).ToString 
Dim MyDate As String = MyText.Substring(MyText.Length - 8)
MyDate  = MyDate.SubString(0, 2) & "/" & MyDate.Substring(2, 2) & "/" & _
          MyDate.Substring(4)
oSheet.Cells(x, iCount - 2) = MyText.Substring(0, _
                              dRecord.Rows(i).Item(iCount).Length - 8) & _
                              MyDate

It’s a bit more brute force and ugly, but that should get you going in the right direction. You might be able to get the same result use Insert (another String operator), but that might be just as ugly.

If you need to do this conversion a lot, I recommend putting it into a helper method, or better yet an extension method.

2nd Edit

You can check for blank record easily enough:

Dim MyText As String = dRecord.Rows(i).Item(iCount).ToString
If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(MyText) Then
    ' convert the format here
End If