How to Format Dates in Pandas

Sometimes we need to adjust the dates or the datetimes to a specific format. Let’s see how we can do it in pandas. We will start with a pandas date frame with three rows of dates in the format of yyyy-mm-dd.

import pandas as pd
 
df = pd.DataFrame({'MyDate': ['2020-03-11', '2021-04-26', '2021-01-17']})
df['MyDate'] = pd.to_datetime(df.MyDate)
df

Let’s say that we want to change the format of the dates and instead of showing the month as a number like “03” and “04” to show “Mar” and “Apr” respectively.

We can easily do it in Python using the strftime method. For example:

df["MyDate"].dt.strftime('%d-%b-%Y')
 

And we get:

Note, that we also change the - to / like:

df["MyDate"].dt.strftime('%d-%b-%Y')
 

The table below show all the available parameters of the strftime method.

Directive	Meaning	Example
%a	Abbreviated weekday name.	Sun, Mon, …
%A	Full weekday name.	Sunday, Monday, …
%w	Weekday as a decimal number.	0, 1, …, 6
%d	Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal.	01, 02, …, 31
%-d	Day of the month as a decimal number.	1, 2, …, 30
%b	Abbreviated month name.	Jan, Feb, …, Dec
%B	Full month name.	January, February, …
%m	Month as a zero-padded decimal number.	01, 02, …, 12
%-m	Month as a decimal number.	1, 2, …, 12
%y	Year without century as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, …, 99
%-y	Year without century as a decimal number.	0, 1, …, 99
%Y	Year with century as a decimal number.	2013, 2019 etc.
%H	Hour (24-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, …, 23
%-H	Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number.	0, 1, …, 23
%I	Hour (12-hour clock) as a zero-padded decimal number.	01, 02, …, 12
%-I	Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number.	1, 2, … 12
%p	Locale’s AM or PM.	AM, PM
%M	Minute as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, …, 59
%-M	Minute as a decimal number.	0, 1, …, 59
%S	Second as a zero-padded decimal number.	00, 01, …, 59
%-S	Second as a decimal number.	0, 1, …, 59
%f	Microsecond as a decimal number, zero-padded on the left.	000000 – 999999
%z	UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM.
%Z	Time zone name.
%j	Day of the year as a zero-padded decimal number.	001, 002, …, 366
%-j	Day of the year as a decimal number.	1, 2, …, 366
%U	Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week). All days in a new year preceding the first Sunday are considered to be in week 0.	00, 01, …, 53
%W	Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week). All days in a new year preceding the first Monday are considered to be in week 0.	00, 01, …, 53
%c	Locale’s appropriate date and time representation.	Mon Sep 30 07:06:05 2013
%x	Locale’s appropriate date representation.	09/30/13
%X	Locale’s appropriate time representation.	07:06:05
%%	A literal ‘%’ character.	%