Create a month field

[paulb1]

Hi All,

I'm rather new to Alteryx, and I've been addicted to training videos to the point things are starting to get blurry.  :)

I've done a count distinct on a field and I want to be able to group those counts by month.  My date field is in this format  2017-02-15  (YYYY-MM-DD).  I'd love to be able to create a new field called Month, and parse the month from my dates into that field (in this style, Jan, Feb, Mar, etc.).   I've tried a couple of things but no success.    Using v11.  Using the date function DateTimeMonth([svcDate]) , I keep getting the error: Formula (8): The field "" is not contained in the record. (Expression #1).  Argh!

Please and thank you,

Paul

[jdunkerley79 · Accepted solution]

The expression you have will get the month number (1-12). The error is saying you haven't specified an output column name in the formula tool:

 If you want Jan-Dec rather than 1-12 use the expression:

DateTimeFormat([svcDate],"%b")

Alternatively you can use a DateTime tool to take a date to a string with a custom format of 'Mon'

[paulb1]

Thanks JD,

How do I specify a valid output column?  I'm referencing the original date field in both the output column and my expression.  This renders my Service Date field null.  If I use a 'new' column name in my expression, I get the same error as before.  Thanks for helping!!

[paulb1]

Nevermind.  I found the Add Column option.  Thank you for the solution.