Question

I have a table with a varchar column which represent date and time in the next format:

dd/MM/yy hh:mm

For example: 27/01/13 07:57

I need to convert this column to DateTime type.

I tried to do it without success.

Assume that @varcharDT contains the VarChar DateTime and I want insert the converted value to @dateTimeDT variable.

DECLARE @varcharDT varchar(1000)
SELECT @varcharDT = dateTimeColumn from dbo.tempTable

--Trying to convert
DECLARE @dateTimeDT DateTime
SET @dateTimeDT= CONVERT (DATETIME, @varcharDT )

The last line raise the next exception:

Conversion failed when converting date and/or time from character string.

I think the conversion fails because my VarChar DateTime is in custom format.

How can I solve it?

I am working with SQL Server 2008 R2

Thanks

Answer 1

Try:

CONVERT(datetime, @varcharDT, 3)

The last number is the style for the convert. The list can be found in the MSDN documentation article CAST and CONVERT (Transact-SQL).