Dan asks I keep having a problem converting numbers into dates...I have the date 19960105 for example, but excel doesn't recognize it as a date without me having to put two slashes into it (i.e. 1996/01/05)...Is there any formula that I can use that will prevent me from having to put in all those slashes?

One option is to use an event handler, somewhat like the military time tip at http://www.mrexcel.com/tip029.shtml. Another method would be a formula. The Date() function allows you to specify a date by giving the Year, Month, Day. The following formula with parse your value and convert it to a date:

=DATE(LEFT(A1,4),MID(A1,5,2),MID(A1,7,2))