Change datatype of a column in a datatable in C#

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HI Experts, I have a Data table where i am reading the values from a excel file, The datatype its taking is string. I have a column 4 with DateTime format. But its reading as string. How do i convert String to DateTime format. I just have one column to change the Datatype. Please help?

What I have tried:

DataTable dtCloned = dt.Clone();
dtCloned.Columns[4].DataType = typeof(DateTime);
foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows) 
{
    dtCloned.ImportRow(row);
}

Posted 21-Jun-18 4:27am

Member 13838748

Updated 21-Jun-18 6:56am

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Richard MacCutchan 21-Jun-18 10:57am

I have just tried this and it reads the fields correctly as DateTime types. Are you sure that is what you have in the Excel file?

MadMyche 21-Jun-18 11:30am

What format is the supposed DateTime in?

Bryian Tan 21-Jun-18 12:59pm

I think the column is smart enough to automatically convert the string into DateTime object if the string is a valid datetime format. To test it out, you can include a random string in column 4, at runtime, the system will throw the error "The string was not recognized as a valid DateTime" -- That my assumption based on the posted code. and by the way, the code and approach look fine although the title of the post not see eye to eye.

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#realJSOP · Answer 1 · 2018-06-21T06:57:00

You can't change the column datatype if a DataTable has data in it.

You can try making sure the column is set to be a date/time in excel before reading it.

I wrote an article that includes code which allows you to import xlsx or csv files, and if you want/need to, you can manually specify the datatype for each column, or let the code finger it out on its own.

CSV/Excel File Parser - A Revisit[^]