In MS Query I have a filter in the criteria that looks like this: >='20180903' And <='20181019'. (The dates in this field are text instead of date format, yyyymmdd)

I want to change it from the above to: >=[enter start date] And <=[enter end date] (or an equivalent), but apparently because of the text format it returns an error message.



Suggestions? Thanks for any help you can provide.

Hi and welcome
any chance of changing the fields to real dates ( data - text to columns - Delimited - Next - Next - Check " Date" - Select YMD from dropdown - Finish) ?

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In source are string values instead of dates?

I'm not sure without testing it out, does MS Query use worksheet or VBA syntax in formulas, so you try either
...>= TEXT([enter start date], "yyyymmdd") AND ... <= TEXT([enter end date], "yyyymmdd")
or
...>= FORMAT([enter start date], "yyyymmdd") AND ... <= FORMAT([enter end date], "yyyymmdd")