Convert time zone date format

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Posted on by WillPage

2,337 Super User 2026 Season 1

Hello.

I need to convert a time from NZST to UTC, but the date format is d/mm/yyyy and the Convert time zone function is picking the wrong part of the date as the day.

In this screen shot, the baseTime is 5/04/2019 2:46:15 AM - this is the 5th day of April. I'm converting to UTC so I want the output to be 4/4/2019 2:46:15 PM, not 5/3/2019 as it appears in the screen shot above.

I looked at all the available formatstrings, and none have the date format the british way around.

Is there a way of doing this without building the baseTime string with a series of complicated splits and concats from the original data?

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vecerpa 786 Microsoft Employee on at

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Hello @WillPage,

This is the biggest pain in the a.. of Flow. DateTime and working with it, especially when you are trying to deploy solution cross the world.

As far as I know, there is no simple way hot to transfer different notation of DateTime into the Flow one. You have to go throught first splits, middle splits and then to combine it again.

I highly siggest you to create Idea for it here - https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Flow-Ideas/idb-p/FlowIdeas.

P.

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RobElliott 10,514 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @WillPage, have you tried using the Convert Time Zone action?

Rob

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Dorul 340 on at

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Hi @WillPage

I guess you need to change your format string:

With your choice General pattern date/time, I get 1/21/2019 12:55 PM too. Try that format string, as it is in my printscreen, it shows me the result 21/01/2019 12:58:15.

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vecerpa 786 Microsoft Employee on at

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Hello @WillPage again,

My fault I missed this option in this action as described by @Dorul you can change formatstring to your datetime.

Big apologise.

Pavel

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WillPage 2,337 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@vecerpaUnfortunately this does not work. It swaps the day and month around on the output only:

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WillPage 2,337 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Further to this, if I set a date as the input that can't be interpreted incorrectly (e.g the day of the month > 12th), I see this:

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v-yuazh-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @WillPage,

You couldn't enter a date with type d/mm/yyyy in the flow, and the flow would always see the date with type m/dd/yyyy.

So please enter a date with type mm/dd/yyyy in the flow if you would like the flow could identify your date.

Best regards,

Alice

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WillPage 2,337 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@v-yuazh-msftthat would be the obvious solution if I could control the input, but unfortunately I have to work with this date format.

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v-yuazh-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @WillPage,

Please take a try to split the date time, and you could refer to link below to do it:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Flow-failing-when-converting-quot-dd-MM-yyyy-quot-to-quot-yyyy/m-p/208297#M21943

Best regards,

Community Support Team _ Alice Zhang
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

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WillPage 2,337 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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@v-yuazh-msft Thanks. I was hoping it wouldn't come to split and recombining them but it will work. I have asked a question in the other thread.

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