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In QGIS I open a geodatabase and save one layer to a SHP file to work on. I use the "Save Layer As" option with the default settings. However I discovered that the SHP Field data type changes, in particular a "Date" type is saved to a "Text" type. I only discovered the issue when I was trying to use the field calculator and there were issues when using text in calculations.

Is there a setting I am missing that maintains the original data types.

Original Data Type from ArcCatalogue enter image description here

QGIS data type enter image description here

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  • Before opening QGIS, you could have check what ArcCatalog tells you when you open your SHP.
    – etrimaille
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 6:49

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Reset to default
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Shapefiles can store dates only in the format YYYY-MM-DD (shapefile is a very old dBase format storing dates with four bytes). A geodatabase format from ArcMap/ArcCatalog has the format 2019-01-15T07:33:12.000 which stores also the time. Exporting to shapefile stores your geodatabase date to a string, then you don't loose information. You can use geopackage instead, which will convert the geodatabase date into a QDateTime format which is the same like in ArcCatalog.

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