Handling Mixed Date Formats in Database Export for Birthday Lists

Yessenia Bernabet Claros
Yessenia Bernabet Claros
Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hello everyone,

I have the following scenario: In our database, the "BirthDate" field contains mixed date formats. Some records have a full date in MM/DD/YYYY format, while others only have the MM/YY format (missing the day). When I try to create a list of birthdays, the result only shows records with a full birthdate, and the records with just MM/YY are excluded.

Additionally, when I export the data using queries, the "BirthDate" field is exported as Text/ABC format, which makes it impossible to work with this field as a date in Power BI.

If I were to convert the field into the MM/01(Placeholder)/YYYY format in Excel and the imported into Power BI, I would not be able to identify true birthdays vs. "No True Birthdays." However, this would require manually identifying and classifying each record—deciding which ones are true birthdays and which ones are missing a day.

Has anyone else encountered a similar issue? What strategies or solutions would you suggest for handling this? I’d appreciate any insights on how to better manage and work with this data, whether through automated processes or manual workarounds.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Comments

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Facilitator 4 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Yessenia Bernabet Claros
    from API perspective, you are getting exactly what is what:

    eb3fafacb13e22574c0fb90b065e5792-huge-im

    meaning, if you do not have m and d, then you do not have exact birthday to work on.

    I don't remember how query (dbview or webview) will show the fuzzy date field, nor how NXT constituent list shows it. however, you just have to play with the possible combination of info. I do not think you can put in day and year alone, as far as I know, you can have

    month/year

    month/day

    month/day/year

    year

    knowing that, and how the data display (use example run to see how the data is shown), then it is pretty easy to construct a date field based on this.

    If the business logic you want to do is birthday related, not “age” related, then you are going to need month/day or month/day/year, anything else is “no good". You can create conditional column in Power Query or DAX pretty easily

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