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Starr DuskkFlag for United States of America

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String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.

I have this date string:
2018/05/23 22:15:14

I want to subtract 5 hours and return the date time in AM/PM format. But when I do, I get the message:
String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.

I've tried:

                  Dim newdate As DateTime = Now()
                    Dim getDate2 As String = "2018/05/23 22:15:14"

 newdate = DateTime.ParseExact(getDate2, "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss", Nothing)
and this:
newdate = DateTime.Parse(getDate2)

I was going to do this afterwards to deduct the 5 hours, but I never get that far:
newdate = newdate.Date().AddHours(-5)

I saw a webpage with an example and it has this:
' From w3.org
        time = DateTime.Parse("2009/02/26 18:37:58")

So why is this not a valid datetime?
2018/05/23 22:15:14

thanks!
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Ryan Chong
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Starr Duskk
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ASKER

they all worked as required.

The last one with the -5 hours has me confused however, because i'm not sending it to the console. I want to save it to a variable:
>>Console.WriteLine($"{newdate.AddHours(-5):MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}")

So I wasn't able to use that part of this one to see how that part worked.

Thanks!
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it_saige
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You can always subtract the hours like Gustav demonstrated above: 
Module Module1
    Sub Main()
        Dim newdate As DateTime = Now
        Dim getDate2 As String = "2018/05/23 22:15:14"

        newdate = DateTime.ParseExact(getDate2, "yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss", Nothing).AddHours(-5)
        Console.WriteLine($"{newdate:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}")
        Console.ReadLine()
    End Sub
End Module

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Will give the same output as above.  In case the formatting of the string is confusing you: 
' This
Console.WriteLine($"{newdate:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}")
' Is the same as this
Console.WriteLine("{0:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}", newdate)
' Which is the same as this
Console.WriteLine(newdate.ToString(MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt))

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Proof of concept - 
Module Module1
    Sub Main()
        Dim newdate As DateTime = Now
        Dim getDate2 As String = "2018/05/23 22:15:14"

        newdate = DateTime.ParseExact(getDate2, "yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss", Nothing).AddHours(-5)
        Console.WriteLine($"{newdate:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}")
        Console.WriteLine("{0:MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt}", newdate)
        Console.WriteLine(newdate.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss tt"))
        Console.ReadLine()
    End Sub
End Module

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Which produces the following output -User generated image-saige-
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Gustav Brock
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This will only work as expected in the US, as tt is localised and / is not a slash but the date separator.
Output here is:

05-23-2018 05:15:14 
05-23-2018 05:15:14 
05-23-2018 05:15:14

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