change text data into regular date

Hello. I have this text string: Apr 9, 2016 2:00:17 AM PDT. How can I change it to date? I don't care about the time part.

Also, out of curiousity, what formula could I use to cut everything off after the date protion? I know I could use left and right but the problem is that the numbers of where left and right change based on the date and time. Thanks.

You can use something like below.

=LEFT(A1,FIND("@",SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","@",3))-1)*1

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Basically, SUBSTITUTE finds 3rd occurrence of space in a string, and replace with "@".
FIND will determine # of characters to "@".
Left(FIND-1) to extract date string.
*1 is used to force text into numeric.