I have dates as my row fields.

Problem: I want to group data by week/month/etc., but don't want to graph
the long text that excel spits out (ie 8/29/2005 - 9/4/2005). Instead, I
want to "extract" just the first date of range using LEFT, or some other text
function. This way I can format as date, and then graph (regular chart, not
pivotchart) on a timescale, manipulate data more easily, etc.

However, it appears that no matter how I set the number format in the
original data, or in the field settings of the pivotTable, when I group the
dates the dates come out m/d/yyyy. I don't care what the format, but I want
the dates to have a consistent number of digits(like mm/dd/yyyy) so I can
extract using the LEFT command.

Is there a way to do this? Or am I making this too complicated? Is there
an easier way?

Thank you!
Heidi