I receive a weekly file from a tool that sometimes throws a "^" character in
front of date. This symbol seems to be throwing excel off and I am unable to
convert the date into number format. Excel treats the cells that begin with
"^" as text.

Oddly enough in another part of the workbook I use the IF function to
compare the start date and end date of a project. Although I am unable to
convert the dates to number format the formula works.

Has anyone run into issues with the "^" character preceding a date? And if
so, how do I fix?