Maybe you're just showing formulas:

Tools|Options|View tab|Uncheck Formulas.

awacs wrote:

... I have a particular Excel sheet. Any date I enter shows up as an
ordinal number (in the cell and printing; in the formula bar it
displays correctly), notwithstanding that I format it as a date.
Anywhere on this sheet. A new sheet added to the workbook behaves as
expected. Obviously, I'm missing something (tried Format-Style and
AutoFormat), but what?

Thanks!

--

Dave Peterson