Combining dates in formulas

[tiinag]

Hi,
I'm trying to combine two fields into one by using the "&" or "concatenate" functions. One of the fields is a date and I'm having trouble with maintaining the exact formatting of the date (20061231) Here's the scenario:

Date field comes from a system download as 10/31/06
I pull this date field to another column that converts it to YYYYMMDD format. This would be equivalent to 20061031

Now I need to combine this formatted date field containing with a field that contains a stiring of text (example = S61); I want to get the following result in a separate cell: S61 - 20061031

When I do the formula (a6&" - "&b6) it converts my date from preferred format to 39021 resulting in S61 - 39021

How can I keep the formatting of the date?

As always, your help is much appreciated.
Thank you
Tiina

 

[onlyadrafter]

Hello,

try

=A6&" - "&TEXT(B6,"yyyymmdd")

 

[tiinag]

Thanks!! It works like a charm!! As always, I'm more than grateful for saving me tons of time with manual workarounds. My company thinks I'm a whiz (which I am, but not as good as you guys... hahaha)