Excel datetime with offset to C# DateTime

Question

I have an excel sheet with a date I get out using some JavaScript or VBA (doesn't matter).

Then I end up having a date that looks like this: "Tue Feb 4 00:00:00 UTC+0100 2014"

Are there any build in versions to convert this to C# DateTime? As you can see then I don't use the time part, and thus also don't care about the UTC offset.

Answer 1

Are there any build in versions to convert this to C# DateTime?

Sure! You can use DateTime.TryParseExact or DateTime.ParseExact methods to parse your string.

string s = "Tue Feb 4 00:00:00 UTC+0100 2014";
DateTime dt;
if(DateTime.TryParseExact(s, "ddd MMM d HH:mm:ss 'UTC+0100' yyyy", 
                          CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
                          DateTimeStyles.None, out dt))
{
    Console.WriteLine(dt);
}

But don't use this way when your string have offset values.

In Custom Date and Time Format Strings page; if your string has signed offset, using DateTimeOffset instead of DateTime is recommended.

With DateTime values, the "zzz" custom format specifier represents the signed offset of the local operating system's time zone from UTC, measured in hours and minutes. It does not reflect the value of an instance's DateTime.Kind property. For this reason, the "zzz" format specifier is not recommended for use with DateTime values.

With DateTimeOffset values, this format specifier represents the DateTimeOffset value's offset from UTC in hours and minutes.

string s = "Tue Feb 4 00:00:00 UTC+0100 2014";
DateTimeOffset dto;
if(DateTimeOffset.TryParseExact(s, "ddd MMM d HH:mm:ss 'UTC'zzz yyyy", 
                                CultureInfo.InvariantCulture,
                                DateTimeStyles.None, out dto))
{
    Console.WriteLine(dto);
}

Then you can convert this DateTimeOffset to DateTime . Because a DateTime doesn't store any offset value. There is no such a thing like; "a DateTime with an offset as 1 hour"