Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Hello Power Automate Community,
I'm encountering an issue with date formatting when reading data from an Excel table column in my Power Automate flow. The dates are not being automatically recognized or formatted correctly.
I'm trying to use functions like formatDateTime() to explicitly format the date. In the attached screenshot, you can see where I'm attempting to apply a function for the "Due Date Time" field using a value from my Excel table, specifically a column named "Fristtermin/Bereich" (likely "Deadline/Date" or similar).

My main challenge is how to correctly integrate the Excel column's value (e.g., "Fristtermin/Bereich") into the formatDateTime() function. I'm unsure of the correct syntax or approach to pass the Excel cell's content as an argument to these functions.
Could anyone provide guidance or an example of how to properly format an Excel date column within Power Automate using these functions?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance.

Categories:

Using flows

Hi @CU15081106-3

You're reading a date from an Excel column called Fristtermin/Bereich in Power Automate, but the format isn't recognized correctly, and formatDateTime() doesn't work as expected.

Step 1. Make sure you're using List rows present in a table action to get the Excel data

Step 2. Wrap your column inside the expression like this

formatDateTime(items('Apply_to_each')?['Fristtermin/Bereich'], 'yyyy-MM-dd')

Step 3. If the column gives a number like 45123, it's an Excel date serial
Use this instead

formatDateTime(addDays('1899-12-30', int(items('Apply_to_each')?['Fristtermin/Bereich'])), 'yyyy-MM-dd')

Step 4. If the column has date like 16.08.2025, convert it using formatDateTime after making sure it's a string
You may need to use substring() or replace() before formatting

Step 5. To check what you're getting from Excel, use a Compose action with this

items('Apply_to_each')?['Fristtermin/Bereich']

Once you know the format, apply the right method to parse and format it correctly