# How to convert a text column into a real date that Glide recognizes as date column?

**URL:** <https://community.glideapps.com/t/how-to-convert-a-text-column-into-a-real-date-that-glide-recognizes-as-date-column/86929>\
**Category:** Ask for Help\
**Created:** [April 21, 2026, 10:06pm UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/how-to-convert-a-text-column-into-a-real-date-that-glide-recognizes-as-date-column/86929 "2026-04-21T22:06:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![Jeff\_Hager](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/community.glideapps.com/jeff_hager/32/43_2.png) [@Jeff\_Hager](https://community.glideapps.com/u/Jeff_Hager)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2026, 12:06am UTC](https://community.glideapps.com/t/how-to-convert-a-text-column-into-a-real-date-that-glide-recognizes-as-date-column/86929/6 "2026-04-23T00:06:48Z")

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Yeah that’s tricky, especially since you are giving it a moving target by not having a date and time in a consistent timezone. Text to Date is not something I’ve ever needed to use. I think the Text to Date column assumes you are giving it a local time and is trying to give you GMT time as a result based on your local timezone, unless you specify a timezone which adjusts it from that GMT time.

When you don’t have a Z at the end of your date and time, I think it’s applying the local offset twice. 5 hours to calculate to GMT and another 5 hours to calculate back??? Doesn’t quite make sense to me why it does that.

When I add a Z to the end, then I get something more predictable. I still get GMT, which is 5 hours ahead of my local time, which makes more sense.

I think I understand what you are trying to accomplish and I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to figure it out myself. I feel like I’m missing something obvious, but I’ve come up with a hacky workaround. This honestly doesn’t make logical sense to me, but it seems to work.

Create the following two columns.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/glideapps/original/3X/1/2/122c436d533a1ea234d53bbaa18c845917056e55.png) ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/glideapps/original/3X/1/f/1f8cc96d977eb4cbfd45834c2810a94f6e8f059f.png)

Which looks like this.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/glideapps/original/3X/d/c/dc6962562d4655b4f5ad4fe9ebbf4bc89cbdb8ed.png)

Then use the OffsetFlip in your Text to Date column.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/glideapps/original/3X/2/a/2ac215b92ceab85c2db7eeda04266d0741a863cf.png)

This is what I get as a result.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/glideapps/original/3X/4/4/44f44498a69422ccd94c94e1afec6aefe68dbee0.png)

This is admittedly a dumb solution, but it’s something usable at least.

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