Date Picker is giving unusual Date Format

[Harpreet_Tohra]

Hi 

I am taking date value using Date Picker in Power Apps and saving data into SharePoint List using MS Flow.
I was getting unusual Date Format like "19 febrero 2004" or in "DD/MM/YYYY".
So I have set Date Picker format from PowerApps itself as "MM/DD/YYYY" and set the language as "en-GB". It must solve the issue.

But I am still getting the wrong formats from some users. like "19 febrero 2004" or in "DD/MM/YYYY". If I try to change the format in MS Flow then I get the error as "The date and time string must be in the ISO 8601 format". Even I am getting the error in Spanish language. Anyone Please help me over this.

TIA

[iAm_ManCat]

Did you check the language and region settings of the SharePoint site?

[Harpreet_Tohra]

Yes @iAm_ManCat  It is formatted as 

[iAm_ManCat]

Your datepicker should not be set to MM/DD/YYYY, especially if its set to en-gb, which uses the dd/mm/yyyy format.

Can you give some more details around how you are setting that field via flow? screenshots and code would be useful in helping debug.

[Harpreet_Tohra]

@iAm_ManCat . Suppose I have a Power App that can be used in Various cities to fill some data that uses date picker values. So what i have found is that date picker picks the system date format if not specified by us. 
So I have set the format and language as said above.
Now What I want is : User selects a date value from date picker. I take that value in collection as a string.
Then Send that value to Power Automate Flow and formatdatetime to that value.
If a user from India submits the values it uses saves the correct format as "MM/DD/YYYY"
But when external users select the date value it saves like "19 febrero 2004" or in "DD/MM/YYYY".
So Power Automate says that this value can not be formatted as it is not in ISO 8601 format.
I do as 
ClearCollect(DOB: DatePicker.SelectedDate)
formatdatetime(DOB,"MM/DD/YYYY").
It gives me error and wrong format. I don't know where am doing wrong

[iAm_ManCat]

When you store a date in SharePoint, assuming you are using a DateTime field, you cannot have it show multiple different formats.

The ISO 8601 format will be like:

"YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss" so you should format it to that if you want to use it within a Flow or else format it as such once you are in the flow - before putting it into SharePoint.

My understanding is that if you patch directly from your App instead of using flow, that the conversion to UTC from local time on the device should happen automatically, so I usually let Power Apps handle that rather than pass it off to flow - is there any other reason you need it to use flow or is it just for that?

[Harpreet_Tohra]

@iAm_ManCat . I have alot more data so can't patch it directly. So only way i have is to save the data into collection and then save it into SharePoint list. 
So what exactly do i need tp do? How can i format  ("19 febrero 2004" or in "DD/MM/YYYY") before putting to date field column as this thing is coming in case of external non indian users only.

And If am forcing the date picker to use en-GB and "MM/DD/YYYY", then how it is saving wrong format of date. 

[iAm_ManCat]

Well because en-GB is English Great Britain, where we use the DD/MM/YYYY format, so if its trying to force it to use Month 30 then it will be invalid. what is the EXACT formula you are using when passing it to the flow?

With regards to the data volume - patch the collection into SharePoint from Power Apps - what's making you pass it to flow?

[Harpreet_Tohra]

@iAm_ManCat . Thanks for revert. I have a form with multiple values so cant do patch due to some reasons. It would be great If it is possible that I can force the date picker to return the date string as "MM/DD/YYYY" irrespective of any region a user is.  Then as per collection 
I will use formatdatetime(DOB,"MM/DD/YYYY") in Power automate flow
Is it possible.

[iAm_ManCat · Accepted solution]

Even if your form has a hundred different columns you can patch it in Power Apps rather than via Flow. I have had apps that do large amounts of lookups, multiple records, patches of complex columns, all in a single patch.

My question will always be, what is your flow doing in addition to the patch and is it something you can't do in Power Apps? I would let Power Apps handle the patching.

When you use Power Automate, the datetime must be a valid ISO 8601 datetime, which is formatted like "YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss" - if you try and use "mm/dd/yyyy" as your INPUT (DOB) then it will see it as invalid.

If you change the "en-GB" to "en-US" then it should give you MM/DD/YYYY but that will not solve your power automate problem, which is due to the date being passed to the formatdatetime function being an invalid ISO 8601 datetime