Would anyone know a regex string or another method of obtaining the date and time from this string into variables? The position of the string could change, so line and char no would not work. This is a bit beyond my ability, can it be done?

Thanks

Dear Customer,(Call Transferred) Start Time & Date: 00:05 Monday 6th February 2017               
Completion Time & Date: 06:00 Monday 6th February 2017                 Details of Work:

This works with the example report you've provided. It returns both the start and completion date and should handle day-of-month suffixes like 'th', 'rd', etc.

import reimport dateutil.parserREPORT = \
"""Dear Customer,(Call Transferred) Start Time & Date: 00:05 Monday 6th February 2017
Completion Time & Date: 06:00 Monday 6th February 2017Details of Work:"""def parse_report(data):dates = []for pattern in ['(?<=Start Time & Date: ).*', '(?<=Completion Time & Date: ).*']:date = dateutil.parser.parse(re.search(pattern, data).group(0))dates.append(date)return datesif __name__ == '__main__':start, completion = parse_report(REPORT)print('Started: {}, Completed: {}'.format(start, completion))

Output

Started: 2017-02-06 00:05:00, Completed: 2017-02-06 06:00:00

Edit

Updated to use dateutil.parser instead which simplifies the code (thanks to asongtoruin for the suggestion).