I have a text file, in the first column I have dates in the format MM/DD/YYYY.
When I open this file in Excel the first column looks bad:

8/31/2006 stays the way it is.
12/01/2006 is converted to 12-01-06 which is wrong - somehow Excel thinks
this is January 12 when in fact it is December 1st.

I'd rather it to be uniform.
How to set up Excel not to convert the data on opening the file or to
convert it the right way for all data?