How to filter SQL Server records by date?

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Posted on by timl

36,766 Super User 2026 Season 1

What's the correct syntax to filter a 'get rows' action by date?

For example, I have a SQL Server data source with a datetime column called DateOfBirth. My 'get rows' action returns 2 records. The screenshot below shows one of those records.

I then added the following OData filter expression.

DateOfBirth lt '2017-01-01'

I would expect this to return both records because the dates of birth values on all records are less than 01-01-2017. However, this expression returns 0 rows, as shown in the screenshot.

I tried all the date fomats I could think of, including UTC. I also tried prefixing the value with datetime, as shown here:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh169248(v=nav.90).aspx

This technqiue failed with the following error:

Unrecognized 'Edm.String' literal 'datedatetime'2010-01-25T02:13:40.1374695Z'' at '15' in 'DateOfBirth lt datedatetime'2010-01-25T02:13:40.1374695Z''.\r\n inner exception: Unrecognized 'Edm.String' literal 'datedatetime'2010-01-25T02:13:40.1374695Z'' at '15' in 'DateOfBirth lt datedatetime'2010-01-25T02:13:40.1374695Z''

Can someone explain what might be going wrong here? Thanks.

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v-micsh-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @timl,

Thanks for the feedback.

I think the filter query won't work should be the time string format issue, but currently it is not possible for me to figure that out.

I will send out feedback on this part to confirm the correct format.

Further, Filter query under SQL Server Get Rows Action works with Char and number type, a note is when working with number type, there is no need to add the single quotes.

Please add a filter Array Action after the Get Rows Action, then use the condition to filter the date.

Using FormatDateTime () function incroduced under workflow Definition Language.

Regards,

Michael

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timl 36,766 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi Michael,

Thanks for your reply. I was hoping not to use the 'Filter Array Action' to avoid selecting all the records from my table, but I guess that's not too much of a problem for smaller tables.

The clarification about how the Get Rows Action works only with char and number types is useful.

Tim

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v-micsh-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @timl,

An update here:

Using the following format should make it work to filter with DateTime column in SQL Get Rows action.

Year(date2Datetime) ge 2017 and month(date2Datetime) ge 7 and day(date2Datetime) ge 1

Regards,

Michael

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timl 36,766 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi Michael, thanks for the update. Yes, that works much better!

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HN-04060819-0 46 on at

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Your solution worked great; However, if I need to get the current date and how can use it with utcNow() function?

I tried below formula but it did not work well.

Year(date2Datetime) ge Year(utcNow())

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mudasirahmed 2 on at

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how to use that if i want to compare hh mm and ss ?

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