Extract Month and Year From Date in R

Question

I have tried a number of methods to no avail. I have data in terms of a date (YYYY-MM-DD) and am trying to get in terms of just the month and year, such as: MM-YYYY or YYYY-

Answer 1

This will add a new column to your data.frame with the specified format.

df$Month_Yr <- format(as.Date(df$Date), "%Y-%m")

df
#>   ID       Date Month_Yr
#> 1  1 2004-02-06  2004-02
#> 2  2 2006-03-14  2006-03
#> 3  3 2007-07-16  2007-07

# your data sample
  df <- data.frame( ID=1:3,Date = c("2004-02-06" , "2006-03-14" , "2007-07-16") )

a simple example:

dates <- "2004-02-06"

format(as.Date(dates), "%Y-%m")
> "2004-02"

side note: the data.table approach can be quite faster in case you're working with a big dataset.

library(data.table)
setDT(df)[, Month_Yr := format(as.Date(Date), "%Y-%m") ]