Date as text. Need to be able to format it.

[Eamonn100]

I have a date that is text, meaning that when I copy/paste it from the internet it can not be formatted. Does anyone know a formula that can leave it so that it can be formatted?

The dates appears like this, "Oct 31, 2015".

Thanks.

 

[Eamonn100]

With all the things Excel does for us automatically, one would think Excel could figure out the date from the month name, a 4-digit year and a day value (positive number less than 32) no matter what order they appeared in. Okay, what about the DATEVALUE function, is it smart enough to figure it out? I can't test it on my system, but does this work on your system...

=DATEVALUE(A1)

I'm in the UK to. No that didn't work.