Visual Basic Language Reference  

DateValue Function

Returns a Date value containing the date information represented by a string, with the time information set to midnight (00:00:00).

Public Function DateValue(ByVal StringDate As String) As DateTime

Parameter

StringDate
Required. String expression representing a date/time value from 00:00:00 on January 1 of the year 1 through 23:59:59 on December 31, 9999.

Exceptions/Errors

Exception type Error number Condition
InvalidCastException 13 StringDate includes invalid time information.

Remarks

If StringDate includes only numbers from 1 through 12 separated by valid date separators, DateValue recognizes the order for month, day, and year according to the Short Date format specified for your system. DateValue uses the current calendar setting from the CurrentCulture property of the CultureInfo class in the System.Globalization namespace. The default CurrentCulture values are determined by Control Panel settings. You can override the Short Date format by setting the ShortDatePattern property of the DateTimeFormatInfo class in the System.Globalization namespace.

DateValue recognizes month names in long, abbreviated, and numeric form. For example, in addition to recognizing 12/30/1991 and 12/30/91, DateValue also recognizes December 30, 1991 and Dec 30, 1991.

If the year part of StringDate is omitted, DateValue uses the current year from your computer's system date.

If the StringDate argument includes time information, DateValue does not include it in the returned value. However, if StringDate includes invalid time information, such as "89:98", an InvalidCastException error occurs.

Example

This example uses the DateValue function to convert a string to a date. You can also use date literals to directly assign a date to an Object or Date variable, for example, MyDate = #2/12/69#.

Dim MyDate As Date
MyDate = DateValue("February 12, 1969")   ' Returns a date.

See Also

DateSerial Function | Day Function | Month Function | Now Property | TimeSerial Function | TimeValue Function | Weekday Function | Year Function | Date Data Type | System Namespace | System.Globalization Namespace | DateTime Structure | InvalidCastException Class | CultureInfo Class | DateTimeFormatInfo Class