Using the DATETIME_PARSE() formula in Airtable

  • Updated on Nov 7, 2025
  • Published on Jul 6, 2022
  • 1 minute(s) read
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All plan types

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  • Owner /Creator - Have access to all field configuration options. Additionally everything editors, commenters, or read-only users can do.

  • Editor - Can sort by, filter by, group by, or hide the field within a view.

  • Commenter / Read-only - Copy a field's URL

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This article covers the DATETIME_PARSE() function—taking date & time information and interpreting it as structured values that Airtable can use to streamline your team's and organization's work.

Note

If you are looking to format a date, then you’ll want to utilize the DATETIME_FORMAT() function. Learn more here and here.

Using the DATETIME_PARSE() function in Airtable

Let’s say you have a single line text field that currently holds the following value: 9/19/2020 2:00pm . Being a text field, this is simply a text string and can't be read by Airtable as a date. This means that it can't be used in the same ways that values in a date field can.

However, DATETIME_PARSE() can read this text string and convert it to a readable date using a formula like this:

DATETIME_PARSE({Text}, 'M/D/YYYY')

360089623194ScreenShot2020-04-02at34254PM.jpg

That said, Airtable cannot always understand date input formats. If you use a format that DATETIME_PARSE can't translate without some help, you can specify a format to match the format of your date text string so Airtable knows which parts are which.

To start, look at the available format specifiers and create a version of your date text string that's replaced with the appropriate format specifiers. For example, if your data is coming with this format - 4 Mar 2017 23:00 - you would use this specifier: D MMM YYYY HH:mm.

Note

To learn more about supported DATETIME_DIFF() time units and specifiers, check out DATETIME_DIFF unit article.

Using the locale function in Airtable

An optional function that can be used within DATETIME_FORMAT is the SET_LOCALE function. This takes a given date time input and returns that date time formatted to match a particular locale. If you need to parse a date first, then you would use:

DATETIME_PARSE({Text field}, 'M/D/YYYY')

An example formula structure using this function would look like:

DATETIME_FORMAT(SET_LOCALE({Your DATETIME_PARSE formula field}, 'af'), 'LLLL')

Or if you wanted to perform both of these functions within the same formula field, then it would look like this:

DATETIME_FORMAT(SET_LOCALE(DATETIME_PARSE({Text field}, 'M/D/YYYY'), 'af'), 'LLLL')

For more information, and examples, on using SET_LOCALE() please see our support article here.