I see what you mean, on my PC it translates to 5/2/8616, therefore about 6611
years in the future.This means you have to subtract 2415019 from the original
date, to format the result to read 31/12/2003. Unless one of the boffins
come up with a real explanation, you can use a helper cell. Say your actual
date is in cell G1, then in cell H1 insert the formula =G1-2415019. Format
this cell as date, and you will get the right answer.

"jdmcleod" wrote:

I have a table from an Access database that I am exporting into Excel to be
used in various spreadsheets. The Access table has numerous fields, but the
ones I will be using are account numbers, balances and dates for
transactions. The problem that I have is that the Access table is storing
the date as a number, specifically as a long integer. For example, December
31, 2003 is stored as 2453005. How can I convert this number into a date
once I get it into Excel? I tried just changing the date format from number
to date, but that gives me a date way off in the future, like ten years from
now.