I realized I posted this in the wrong forum yesterday:

Is it possible to convert a string to date during the record selection process? I have a table in my SQL database that is of type VarChar and stores the date as 20120227. I cannot convert this to Date on the DB side due to other factors. Is it possible to convert this VarChar field to a date during Record Selection (to be compared against a Date CR parameter)? There is no formatting needed as that's handled elsewhere, I just need to convert it during record selection to use against the Date CR Parameter.

The only way I can think to do it is to use a SQL command but would like to avoid that since I'll need to do redo the entire report.

Thanks, however I get a "Bad date Format String" when running a preview. I also adjusted the left({table.strindate},2) to include 4 places. Looks correct in the details section.

Would this be caused by the NULL and "" values in the database?

Thanks, I had to scrap trying to salvage the report and ended up having to do the query for the conversion due to other factors.