Two ways:

1. select the column of text-dates and use Text to Columns to convert them
to numeric dates (in-place)

2. With Dec 3, 2009 in A1, enter in B1:

=DATEVALUE(A1) and copy down. Then format the values in column B as Datte.
--
Gary''s Student - gsnu200824


"Kathy" wrote:

I am working on a huge Excel 2003 workbook with many worksheets. Initially I
am downloading the data from another database into Excel. All the dates
(thousands of them) are written like Dec 3, 2007. I want to change them to be
like 12/3/07 but I don't want to have to type it all in manually if I don't
have to. If I go to format and go to date it seems you can select that format
but it doesn't change what is already in the downloaded data. Is there a
simple way to do this? Thanks.