Are you not understanding or are you just ignoring what I'm posting? I would like to know because, if it's the latter, I won't waste any more time. DO NOT convert your DateTime value to a string. Save the DateTime value directly. Format is then irrelevant. Set the data type for your column to whatever MySQL uses for dates/times - it may be datetime or similar but I don't use MySQL much so I'm not sure - and then save DateTime.Now directly to the database. If you are converting a DateTime to a string for any purpose other than display then you're doing it wrong.