I have an Excel 2003 spreadsheet that has a column full of dates. I have no
control over how the spreadsheet has been configured.

The dates are in an American format but I am in the UK and my laptop is
configured for uk dates.

I have noticed that cells that contain dates that would be illegal in uk
format i.e. '10/29/04 10:36' are formatted 'General'

Dates that are legal in the uk format i.e. 12/8/05 11:23 are formatted
'Custom dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm'.

I have failed to get the dates to read in the uk format i.e. using the above
examples:-

10/29/04 needs to be 20 April 2004 and
12/8/05 needs to be 8 December 2005.

In the first example I cannot extract a serial because it is seen as text.
In the second any conversion is coming out as 12 August 2005.

I am not worried about the time, I just need the date.

I know that I am probably missing something silly here but ban anyone give
me a pointer on how to get these dates to read as I need please.

Regards.
Bill.