Error - SqlDateTime overflow. Must be between 1/1/1753 12:00:00 AM and 12/31/9999 11:59:59 PM

Question

A DateTime in C# is a value type, not a reference type, and therefore cannot be null. It can however be the constant DateTime.MinValue which is outside the range of Sql Servers DATETIME data type.

Value types are guaranteed to always have a (default) value (of zero) without always needing to be explicitly set (in this case DateTime.MinValue).

Conclusion is you probably have an unset DateTime value that you are trying to pass to the database.

DateTime.MinValue = 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM
DateTime.MaxValue = 23:59:59.9999999, December 31, 9999, 
                    exactly one 100-nanosecond tick 
                    before 00:00:00, January 1, 10000

MSDN: DateTime.MinValue

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Regarding Sql Server

datetime
Date and time data from January 1, 1753 through December 31, 9999, to an accuracy of one three-hundredth of a second (equivalent to 3.33 milliseconds or 0.00333 seconds). Values are rounded to increments of .000, .003, or .007 seconds

smalldatetime
Date and time data from January 1, 1900, through June 6, 2079, with accuracy to the minute. smalldatetime values with 29.998 seconds or lower are rounded down to the nearest minute; values with 29.999 seconds or higher are rounded up to the nearest minute.

MSDN: Sql Server DateTime and SmallDateTime

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Lastly, if you find yourself passing a C# DateTime as a string to sql, you need to format it as follows to retain maximum precision and to prevent sql server from throwing a similar error.

string sqlTimeAsString = myDateTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fff");

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Update (8 years later)

Consider using the sql DateTime2 datatype which aligns better with the .net DateTime with date range 0001-01-01 through 9999-12-31 and time range 00:00:00 through 23:59:59.9999999

string dateTime2String = myDateTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.fffffff");

MSDN datetime2 (Transact-SQL)

I find using the following works quite well for SQL min/max dates after many DB related errors:

DateTime rngMin = (DateTime)System.Data.SqlTypes.SqlDateTime.MinValue;

DateTime rngMax = (DateTime)System.Data.SqlTypes.SqlDateTime.MaxValue;

Beware when comparing a .Net DateTime to SqlDateTime.MinValue or MaxValue. For example, the following will throw an exception:

DateTime dte = new DateTime(1000, 1, 1);
if (dte >= SqlDateTime.MinValue)
    //do something

The reason is that MinValue returns a SqlDateTime, not a DateTime. So .Net tries to convert dte to a SqlDateTime for comparison and because it's outside the acceptable SqlDateTime range it throws the exception.

One solution to this is to compare your DateTime to SqlDateTime.MinValue.Value.

The code you have for the two columns looks ok. Look for any other datetime columns on that mapping class. Also, enable logging on the datacontext to see the query and parameters.

dc.Log = Console.Out;

DateTime is initialized to c#'s 0 - which is 0001-01-01. This is transmitted by linqtosql to the database via sql string literal : '0001-01-01'. Sql cannot parse a T-Sql datetime from this date.

There's a couple ways to deal with this:

• Make sure you initialize all date times with a value that SQL can handle (such as Sql's 0 : 1900-01-01 )
• Make sure any date times that may occasionally be omitted are nullable datetimes

This error occurs if you are trying to set variable of type DateTime to null. Declare the variable as nullable, i.e. DateTime? . This will solve the problem.