You didn't turn on "formula view" accidentally by any chance? Tools,
Options, View, Formulas. The shortcut for this setting,

Ctrl-`

is very easy to hit by mistake.

--
Jim
"tinkertoy" wrote in message
...
| User has a spreadsheet with dates - It used to be formated as Month-day
| (Mar-01). "All of a sudden" the column now displays another date format -
| example 38569 - in the cell, in the formula field it shows the correct
day,
| but as mm/dd/yyyy. The format of the column is date. We looked at
another
| formula - example ="01/01/1900"+38569 and it shows in the formula field as
| the correct date - so this is the count of days from 01/01/1900 - how do
we
| convert it back? BTW we copied the entire spreadsheet to a new one - and
the
| date displays correctly!
| --
| Rona/tinkertoy