What could have happened is that your dates got their serial numbers (days
after Jan 0 1900) then
formatted as text, try this. Reformat them as general, then copy an empty
cell, select the dates and
do editpaste special and select add, now try to format as dates

--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom


"bob" wrote in message
...
I have been working on a large spreadsheet. my date formats have been
fine
until today, when I opened the spreadsheet to update it and all the dates
are
appearing as numbers. I have tried reformatting the cell, coping the
format
from a cell that is working on another spreadsheet, deleting, inserting
and
copying formats but nothing is working. What has happened? I am using
excel
2000 on windows xp. Any suggestions gratefully received.