# Help Request: Formatting Dates for Observable Plot

**URL:** <https://talk.observablehq.com/t/help-request-formatting-dates-for-observable-plot/10173>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [January 12, 2025, 9:57am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/help-request-formatting-dates-for-observable-plot/10173 "2025-01-12T09:57:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sam-whitmore](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/sam-whitmore/32/9426_2.png) [@sam-whitmore](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/sam-whitmore)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 9:57am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/help-request-formatting-dates-for-observable-plot/10173/1 "2025-01-12T09:57:27Z")

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Could somebody please clarify how Observable Plots handles Date values? I’m able to make it work with ISO values, and I’m able to make it work with basic Date values (e.g. “2025-01-12”), but I’d like to be more specific with the formatting of the data I’ve got coming in so it’s resilient to various timezones within the same dataset.

With that in mind, I’m mapping over my array before inserting it into my plot(s), and I’d like to know how much freedom I have to format my outputted data.

Cheers!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cobus](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/cobus/32/9670_2.png) [@Cobus](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/Cobus)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 4:26pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/help-request-formatting-dates-for-observable-plot/10173/2 "2025-01-12T16:26:22Z")

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Try the Plot discussion forum [here](https://github.com/observablehq/plot/discussions)