How to change the datetime format in pandas

Question

My dataframe has a DOB column (example format 1/1/2016) which by default gets converted to pandas dtype 'object': DOB object

Converting this to date format with df['DOB'] = pd.to_datetime(df['DOB']), the date gets converted to: 2016-01-26 and its dtype is: DOB datetime64[ns].

Now I want to convert this date format to 01/26/2016 or in any other general date formats. How do I do it?

Whatever the method I try, it always shows the date in 2016-01-26 format.

Answer 1

You can use dt.strftime if you need to convert datetime to other formats (but note that then dtype of column will be object (string)):

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({'DOB': {0: '26/1/2016', 1: '26/1/2016'}})
print (df)
         DOB
0  26/1/2016 
1  26/1/2016

df['DOB'] = pd.to_datetime(df.DOB)
print (df)
         DOB
0 2016-01-26
1 2016-01-26

df['DOB1'] = df['DOB'].dt.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')
print (df)
         DOB        DOB1
0 2016-01-26  01/26/2016
1 2016-01-26  01/26/2016