Charlie,

Give this a try

1. Select the cells that contain your data (ensure that it is contain in
one column only)
2. DataText to Column
3. Choose fixed width, click next 2x
4. Under Column data format choose DATE, dropdown option [MDY] click
finish.
5. You can now try to format your cells

BTW - I'm using xl2002 not sure if this is available w/ other version.

Hope this could help.

Jon-jon

"Charlie" wrote in message
...
Hi everyone!
I have a problem with the formatting of dates in one column of my
spreadsheet.
Windows XP on my computer is setup to use the date format that shows days
then months, then year i.e. dd/mm/yyyy. So when I pasted a column of dates
that was generated by a program that uses the other main format
(mm/dd/yyyy)
excel still thought that the dates were in the dd/mm/yyyy format. Now when
I
go to FormatCells and try and change the date format to mm/dd/yyyy excel
doesn't let me because as far as it is concerned, most of the dates are
invalid as they have months greater than 12!!
This problem is really, really frustrating so any help on this one would
be
really great.
Thanks!
Charlie