Extract dates from free field text

Question

Hi Alteryx community!

I'm working on extracting dates from free-form text in user descriptions. Snippet below. I've attached an Excel file as well.

Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Creating regex patterns for the date formats:

- New data often includes date formats I haven't accounted for, which means some dates may be missed

- With the large volume of data, manually spotting dates that regex misses (and distinguishing them from text without dates) is challenging

2. Using the Named Entity Recognition tool:

- The NER tool hasn't been tagging dates accurately, and I can't seem to find any additional settings to improve its precision

Any insights or alternative methods to automate this process would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

Extract dates from free field text.xlsx

gawa · Answer

@suwenchuan  OK...then it becomes very difficult problem...I need sometime to come up with solution.

suwenchuan · Answer

Hi @gawa, thank you for your reply. I'd like to add a bit more context to my query. Basically, the raw data that I receive will only be column "Description". what I need to get is the "Desired Output",

gawa · Answer

hi @suwenchuan

I'm not sure this is the one you want or you already tried...but please try Regex tool with 'Tokenize' mode like this.

1242006_gawa.yxmd