Sorrowfully I think you are right Dales. I think that is what I should
do. I was trying to avoid it, in case such a function was already
developed. It is amazing that different Excel language versions can not
understand each other. The minimum I would expect is that any version
has functions, like val(...), that always/only work with english and
then, trough format, could give outputs in the local language,
something like:

Mylocal_date=Format(ValFunction("3 Dec 2005"),"short date")

Mika