Question

Is there a simple way to convert a date stored in a varchar in the format mon-yy (e.g. ‘Feb-09’) to a datetime which will convert any invalid values to null.

I’m currently using string manipulation combined with a case statement but it’s rather cumbersome.

Answer 1

For valid values you can just put a day on it and it’s a complete date:

convert(datetime,'01-' + 'Feb-09',120)