select the cell and in menu bar
format-cells-number- dates
choose any format you want.
including mm/dd/yyyy

mine excel 2000
=====================


Eve wrote in message
...
Somehow I accidentally hit a key(s) and caused my dates in one column of
my
worksheet to convert to corresponding 5 digit numbers. Each date has its
own
unique number (i.e. 7/1/2005 now reads 38534). I want to change it back
so
that is actually displays the dates. How do I do that?

I'm using MS Office Excel 2003 running on XP.

Thanks.