I need to calculate a date field of a FGDB raster catalog (but I guess it could be any table or fc for that matter). The field I need to convert is a string that contains date values in the format: '2013-09-23 10:01:50' or for your Python referenced format it is: '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'My problem is that (I think) the ESRI Date field has trouble with really early dates. For example, this how could I correctly set a date field value with this string:'0001-01-01 00:00:00'Yes, that is year "1". When I run the code below, it calculates the field but this example value above is set to '1/1/2001', dropping the hh:mm:ss and always starts in the 21st century. I need the date field to save it as the original string, but stored as a date --- I am using the Time Slider to create time-series animations and it is very finicky about using dates.Any help is appreciated! fld = "_dateText_str" updFld = "_dateText_str_Converted" cursor = arcpy.UpdateCursor(ras) for row in cursor: strVal = row._dateText_str dtVal = datetime.datetime.strptime(strVal, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') row.setValue(updFld, dtVal) cursor.updateRow(row)