Extracting Date from Drop Down Column to a Date Column

Shayma Gross

I have a drop down column with the dates formatted as "Saturday, November 23, 2019" so people can select class dates.  I need to convert those to an actual date column so I can sort by date in a report but I cannot figure out the proper formula.  Any help would be great.  Thanks.

Paul Newcome

First thing to do is parse the data out.

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To get the year:

 

=VALUE(RIGHT([Dropdown Column]@row, 4)

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Month would be:

 

=MID([Dropdown Column]@row, FIND(" ", [Dropdown Column]@row) + 1, FIND(" ", [Dropdown Column]@row, FIND(" ", [Dropdown Column]@row) + 1) - FIND(" ", [Dropdown Column]@row))

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Day would be:

 

=VALUE(LEFT(RIGHT([Dropdown Column]@row, 8), 2)))

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Then we would convert the Month text to a number. There are a few ways to do this. The most straightforward being a nested IF statement along the lines of:

 

=IF(Month@row = "January", 1, IF(Month@row = "February", 2, IF(Month@row = "March", 3, .......................................................))))))))))))

 

and continuing the pattern for all twelve months.

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Then you would enter something like this into the new date type column.

 

=DATE(Year@row, [Month Number]@row, Day@row)