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Format Synced Field as Date Time

  • May 26, 2021
  • 7 replies
  • 64 views

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I have a date time field being sync’d from another base and I need to reformat that MM-DD-YYYY HH:MM into a true date time format from the string it comes in as, as a sync’d field.

Any ideas?

7 replies

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  • Inspiring
  • May 28, 2021

Create a formula field and use DATETIME_PARSE({your synced date time field})

This will cause the formula field to register as a date field, and you can use the Format tab in the formula field to select the format of the date and time.

If you need more customized formatting, you can wrap the above formula inside a DATETIME_FORMAT() function. This gives you a huge amount of customizability for how to show the result. And the use of the DATETIME_PARSE() function will allow Airtable to see and treat the result as a date for the purposes of sorting, filtering, etc.


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  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • May 28, 2021

Create a formula field and use DATETIME_PARSE({your synced date time field})

This will cause the formula field to register as a date field, and you can use the Format tab in the formula field to select the format of the date and time.

If you need more customized formatting, you can wrap the above formula inside a DATETIME_FORMAT() function. This gives you a huge amount of customizability for how to show the result. And the use of the DATETIME_PARSE() function will allow Airtable to see and treat the result as a date for the purposes of sorting, filtering, etc.


That is exactly how I set it up.

See attached and I get an error.


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  • Inspiring
  • May 28, 2021

Try using the DATETIME_PARSE() function without any arguments (just the variable itself inside the parentheses).


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  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • May 28, 2021

Still an error.

DATETIME_PARSE({New Meeting Day/Time (from Link to Updates) 2})


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  • Inspiring
  • May 29, 2021

Still an error.

DATETIME_PARSE({New Meeting Day/Time (from Link to Updates) 2})


Sorry this is so annoying. Hopefully this will work:

DATETIME_PARSE({New Meeting Day/Time (from Link to Updates) 2}, "M/D/YYYY h:mma")


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  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • June 1, 2021

Sorry this is so annoying. Hopefully this will work:

DATETIME_PARSE({New Meeting Day/Time (from Link to Updates) 2}, "M/D/YYYY h:mma")


My Hero! Thank you so much!


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  • Inspiring
  • June 2, 2021

My Hero! Thank you so much!


Sorry it took so long! In the process I got to learn about yet another undocumented behavior of Airtable. (There are so so so so so very many of those.)