Data is in format "yymmdd", for example 991123 (23 nov 1999) 421 (21 apr 1900) 60823 (23 aug 2006) 0 (1 jan 1900) 70930 (30 sep 2007) Default Year 1900 Default Month 1 Default Day 1 -----Original Message----- From: Bobak, Mark [mailto:Mark.Bobak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 4:37 PM To: Harvinder Singh; oracle-l Subject: RE: Date conversion question Well, that depends on what those values actually represent... Are they julian dates? Days/minutes/seconds since some epoch? How would you convert 991123? What date does that represent? How about 421? 0? Without knowing what the data means, we have no way to answer you.... -Mark -- Mark J. Bobak Senior Database Administrator, System & Product Technologies ProQuest 789 E. Eisenhower, Parkway, P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 +1.734.997.4059 or +1.800.521.0600 x 4059 mark.bobak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.proquest.com www.csa.com ProQuest...Start here. -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Harvinder Singh Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 3:44 PM To: oracle-l Subject: Date conversion question Hi, We have a flat file that contains a column and the values are stored as: 991123 421 60823 0 70930 Now we are moving data from flat file to table and this column will be inserted into Date dataype column, What is the way to insert into this table and avoid "ORA-01821: date format not recognized" errors. Thanks --Harvinder -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l