Convert Pandas Column to DateTime
Use the to_datetime function, specifying a format to match your data.
raw_data['Mycol'] = pd.to_datetime(raw_data['Mycol'], format='%d%b%Y:%H:%M:%S.%f')
You can use the DataFrame method .apply() to operate on the values in Mycol:
>>> df = pd.DataFrame(['05SEP2014:00:00:00.000'],columns=['Mycol'])>>> df Mycol0 05SEP2014:00:00:00.000>>> import datetime as dt>>> df['Mycol'] = df['Mycol'].apply(lambda x: dt.datetime.strptime(x,'%d%b%Y:%H:%M:%S.%f'))>>> df Mycol0 2014-09-05