Changing V string to date format (with added punctuation marks)

[bobbybackshots_]

Hello, I am creating a dashboard that will be plugged into Power BI but cleansed in Alteryx. This dashboard is supposed to be refreshed, however, I am worried about uniformity as some dates are not uniform or because they are not in the right format they are not included in other steps. Does any one know how to oncert something such as "April 2023??"(question marks included) into something like 04-01-2023. For almost all of my columns, it is easy to do except for the ones typed in string format. If uniformity is not an option, is there any way to safeguard or at least know when there is an error moving forward? Thanks! 

[Prometheus · Accepted solution]

@bobbybackshots_ I used the Replace function in a Formula tool to replace the question mark (?) in "April 2023?" with nothing so I could use the DateTimeParse expression to turn the remaining full month and year into a date. The thing is, it'll turn "April 2023" into 2023-04-01, but if you can't live with that, you could always remove the "-01." Take a look at this DateTime Functions page. It's always super helpful to me: https://help.alteryx.com/20231/designer/datetime-functions. 

 

[bobbybackshots_]

this is great thank you so much.