Thank you Brianna- I saw that article too but they are trying to convert a julian date to a standard date- I am trying to do the opposite 

You were too fast for me! I just updated my post. Basically, the opposite should work just fine as far as I'm aware, so can you elaborate on your issue?

:)  For example- I would like for Workflow to convert  a field with the value 05/02/2016 06:55:59 PM and pass the julian short date 16123 to another field

I meant what is it that you've tried:

I've tried formatting the token but that isn't working.

It should be possible to go the other direction using similar methods as those in the post I linked.

Hi Brianna- I tried to format the date using the format constraints that mainframe systems use YYDDD but that did not work.

I can do it in Excel with the following formula- =TEXT(A2,"yy")&TEXT((A2-DATEVALUE("1/1/"&TEXT(A2,"yy"))+1),"000") but I would really rather Workflow make the conversion.

Can you post a screenshot of your attempt? It's difficult to debug without information on what specifically you are trying. :)

Right now I am doing a lookup because I couldn't make the formatting work so a screenshot would probably not be that helpful.

From my limited experience, I'd recommend trying the token formatting again, and posting what you've tried: often it's difficult to spot your own regular expression mistakes.

If you're stuck as to where to start, perhaps someone with more knowledge on the topic can post their suggestion :D

Thanks Brianna for looking at it!  I've decided to go with the script method to accomplish this.