Date Formatting

[alethea2000]

Hi I have a load of date that have been imported from a system and they look like this

I have changed the format to UK format rather than US but excel won't change them as it doesn't recognise them as dates. Is there a way that i can get excel to recognise them as uk dates. i was going to do left mid and right function but the problem is is that i need to sort by these dates so i do need excel to recognise them. any ideas? thank you

01/15/2004
01/16/2004
01/16/2005
01/17/2004
01/17/2005
01/17/2005
01/17/2005
01/17/2005
01/18/2005
01/18/2005
01/18/2005
01/20/2004
01/20/2004
01/22/2004
01/22/2004
01/23/2004
01/23/2004
01/23/2004
01/24/2005
01/24/2005
01/25/2004
01/25/2005
01/25/2005
01/25/2005

 

[Norie]

Select the column with the dates.

Goto Data>Text to columns...

On the 3rd step chose Date for Column data format and MDY from the dropdown.

 

[alethea2000]

i think this is the best little bit of advice ever, i'm always coming across this. thanks a mil

 

[Alan2005]

Thank you

Just read this thread and am mighty happy that I did. What a neat trick.
I have been pulling my teeth trying to figure out how to get Excel to recognise the US format and use TEXT(e.t.c) to return the correct day.

Thank you, thank you...now I can get on with it.