Your assumption is incorrect.
What is shown is not what the value of the cell is.
Just try.

To know all about dates, look he

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/datetime.htm#AddingDates

--
Kind regards,

Niek Otten
Microsoft MVP - Excel

"Munchkin" wrote in message
...
Obviously, since the month is the first number the sort feature sorts by
that. Is there a way to sort by the year instead - or do I need to add
another column that just shows the year and sort by that first?