Hi IT05, (certainly hope that's not your real name),

Dates are stored as days past a base date, and time is fractional days both
can be in the same cell as a number.

If format is all you want then format as mm/dd/yyyy but if
you need the value then you can use =MOD(A1,1) which
will remove decimal places and format as mm/dd/yyyy
dates are numbers so you can change the format without reentering
because you are not switching between text and numbers (or numbers and text)..

More information on Date and Time
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/datetime.htm
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"IT05" wrote in message ...
5/12/2005 1:20:33 PM = text field
10/20/2004 10:02:40 AM = text field

I need to extract just the date and ignore the time.

Tried =MID(F2,1,9) and it worked for 5/12/2005 1:20:33 PM. Output showed
5/12/2005

Apparently this would not work for 10/20/2004 10:02:40 AM. Output would show
10/20/200.

Is there a work-around for this or a different formula that can be used?