Your problem is likely still the date format. Excel puts dates in as
an integer, counting days from 1/1/1900. Today, 11/4/2008, is 39756.
Then you can use a Date format to show it as a date.

I'm guessing your reference cells are values with date format, but the
other data, presumably downloaded from Access, is text. That won't
match. Either change the data to values or change the two reference
cells to text.