i have a column in a table which is varchar format but contains timedate type data eg. '24/7/07 05:32 PM'. I'm trying to run a query which uses a where clause to only return the rows where this column is equal to the most recent date. I've tried using the MAX() function which returns a valid result but not the most recent date.

just keep refreshing the MAX it works for me and if that doesn't work, create a new table with this integrated into it and copy the data

Depends on the database you're using but most of them has a convertion function so you can convert from char to date, for example you can do in MS SQL "Select * from YourTableName where convert(char(10),DateAsVarcharInYourTable,101) = date()" or if you just need the last 10 records in you data you can also do "Select top 10 * from YourTableName order by convert(char(10),DateAsVarcharInYourTable,101) desc" in MySQL is a little bit more complicated, I can't remember the exact syntax but it will follow the same logic for the date translation, now why are you saving a date as varchar? just curious?