Access - ascii text to date conversion

[farmerami1]

We have been populating an Access database (dbase4) with another program since '97. The date has always been entered in as text in the format of mm/dd/yy. Now we are told that it needs to be in date format. Is there a way to convert an existing column of text characters into a masked date field column?

 

[PHV]

In table design view try to change the data type of the field from text to DateTime.

Hope This Helps, PH.
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[BNPMike]

Or create another column (DateTime) an update it with the value of the existing column. That might make it easier to locate problems.

 

[farmerami1]

In the table design view, I tried to change that column from a text field to a date time field. It gave me a multitude of warnings and would not let me do it. One of the columns is bound to another table, but not specifically the column that I am trying to change. I think I will have to go with response 2 or change the format of the column from mm/dd/yy to yyyymmdd as I am only allowed 8 characters from the ini file of the program that is populating it. How hard is that?