title: Import null and improperly formatted datetime values into datetime column MySQL
body: <p>I'm using a MySQL database with the Sequel Pro interface, and am new to SQL. I'm attempting to import data from a csv file and one of the columns I am importing into is of type datetime. However, the format I receive the data in is mm/dd/yy hh:mm AM/PM or null. Originally, I modified the type of the column to be varchar to avoid the issue but now I need to perform some date functions on the data that can't be done unless the column has a datetime type and format, so I need a way to convert the incoming data to the proper datetime format. </p>
  
  <p>Additionally, people with no knowledge of SQL or databases are going to be running the import statement so it would be preferable to have them simply click file -- import and not have to enter anything complicated into the mysql command line. Also, after running a query I need to export the data in the same format it came in (mm/dd/yy hh:mm AM/PM or null). </p>
  
  <p>Here are some sample values from the column: </p>
  
  <pre><code>Completion Time
  null
  6/16/14 10:33 AM
  null
  null
  6/16/14 13:03 PM
  6/17/14 13:53 PM
  6/18/14 14:38 PM
  6/18/14 14:52 PM
  6/19/14 13:13 PM
  6/18/14 18:56 PM
  6/18/14 19:02 PM
  null
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>A possibly simple solution that I've gathered might not be such a good idea from a couple of hours of googling, would be to keep the column type as varchar then somehow extract just the mm/dd/yy portion of the incoming data, convert that to proper MySQL date format and then perform my date functions.</p>
  
  <p>Anyway any help would be greatly appreciated. </p>