Change Datatype Varchar to Date.

Question

I have inserted 5000 records using datatype varchar but now, I want to Change Datatype varchar to Date? can I change this datatype?

YaminiKumar Boyapati · Answer

Three ways you can do it. 1) As you created it with datatype varchar let it be so and where ever you are showing, convert it to date like CAST('2020-03-04' as date) 2) Create a new column with Datatype Date and update all the records into it and then delete the varchar column. 3) Lastly, convert that column data into "yyyy-mm-dd" format which would be bit hard and then convert the column into date type.

Piyush Pansuriya · Answer

Hi, You can do, but first you have to change the date format which you have inserted. It should be 'yyyy-MM-dd'. For that you have to update the table first. May I know in which format you have inserted the date part?

Rijwan Ansari · Answer

ALTER TABLE dbo.tablename ADD newcol DATETIME; UPDATE dbo.tablename SET newcol = CONVERT (DATETIME, REPLACE ( LEFT (varchar_col, 11), '/' , ' ' ) + ' ' + RIGHT (varchar_col, 8), 113); Once you've verified, you can drop the varchar_col, rename newcol, and then re-add any affected indexes.

Jaimin Shethiya · Answer

Hello Dipak, Yes you have to change that first you have to convert varchar value to datetime value and update that is same property and after converted all the data then you have to update that column datatype to datetime. Thanks

Amit Gupta · Answer

Simply create a new column then update the value from your varchar column by converting it to datetime and finally delete the varchar column

Amira Bedhiafi · Answer

What RDBMS you are using ? Can you please share a simple of your data ?

Ajay Gohil · Answer

Hello You can refer to the following link: https://searchoracle.techtarget.com/answer/Converting-a-column-from-VARCHAR2-to-DATE https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39617862/sql-server-convert-varchar-to-date-in-alter-table

Jignesh Kumar · Answer

Hi Deepak, Please use this link which will solve your problem, https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/17904/convert-varchar-column-to-datetime

Bhawna Tuteja · Answer

You can do this by using convert function and then date time format

Change Datatype Varchar to Date.

Answers (9)