DateTime_Format... What am I doing wrong?

#1

Hello Community,

I’ve read and triple attempted to recreate this from earlier threads on the subject but no luck. I’ve labeled a column Trial Date and want the day of the week corresponding to the dates listed to appear in the next column. i.e. 2/8/19 = Friday

I’ve typed in:

DATETIME_FORMAT(Trial Date,‘dddd’)
DATETIME_FORMAT(Trial_Date,‘dddd’)
DATETIME_FORMAT(TrialDate,‘dddd’)

The error messages I get are:
Sorry, there was a problem saving this field. Invalid formula. Please check your formula text.
Sorry, there was a problem saving this field. Unknown field names: trial_date

Note: I do have two additional date columns, one labeled DOB and another labeled Entry Date. Am I limited to only one for this formula to work?

Here is a screenshot of one of a dozen combinations I have tried: https://www.screencast.com/t/FlMsixvfPlYX

#2

Your field name is Trial Date with a space between ‘Trial’ and ‘Date’. To use that field in an Airtable formula, you need to surround it with curly braces, like so: {Trial Date}. The same applies to field names that begin with a numeric character or otherwise run the risk of confusing Airtable. (Most of the example formulas you find in Airtable Community always enclose field names in braces, even when Airtable would accept the un-braced version without issue, simply to make it obvious it is a field name. I’ve gotten so used to that, I typically always brace names. While is is a few additional keystrokes, there’s no instance of which I’m aware where adding braces will cause trouble.)

#3

I want to add that if you use the suggestion in the ‘formula builder’ the field is added in the correct way automatically.

#4

Good point. It’s been so long since I used the formula builder, I forget that…

#5

Bingo, that worked! Thank you very much W_Vann_Hall & Elias_Gomez_Sainz!