Hi

Are you running a ASP.NET or winforms application?
Are you using a Datagrid?

Based on my research, here is some code about how to do that in a Grid view
in winform.
1.      Set current thread's date pattern to "yyyy-MM-dd"

  [STAThread]
       static void Main()
       {
           CultureInfo ci =
(CultureInfo)CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Clone();
           ci.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern = "yyyy-MM-dd";
           Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;
           Application.EnableVisualStyles();
           Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
           Application.Run(new Form1());
       }

2. For the string as "Date: xxxx-xx-xx"
       private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
       {
           DataTable table = new DataTable();
           //// Create the first column.
           DataColumn dateColumn = new DataColumn();
           dateColumn.DataType = System.Type.GetType("System.DateTime");
           dateColumn.ColumnName = "date";
           dateColumn.DefaultValue = "2002-4-18";

           //// Create the second, calculated, column.
           DataColumn testColumn = new DataColumn();
           testColumn.DataType = System.Type.GetType("System.String");
           testColumn.ColumnName = "Test";
           testColumn.Expression = "'Date: ' + SubString(Convert(date,
'System.String'),1,10)";
           
           // Add columns to DataTable.
           table.Columns.Add(dateColumn);
           table.Columns.Add(testColumn);

           DataRow row = table.NewRow();
           table.Rows.Add(row);
           DataView view = new DataView(table);
           this.dataGridView1.DataSource = view;
       }

Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Alan:

Just to make sure i understand the problem, is it that you're trying to
store a formatted String in a data column of type string?