Losing date values upon conversion from EXCEL to CSV
 

I have a large (12,000 rows) EXCEL 2003 worksheet with a column of birthday
dates in the format "24-Mar-52."

The EXCEL file is not importing correctly into Outlook 2003 Contacts,
perhaps of the large size of the EXCEL file. The conversion process just
hangs and then freezes. However, when I save the EXCEL file as a CSV file, it
imports correctly. However, although the birthday dates appear identical in
the resulting CSV file, when I import that file into Outlook Contacts, the
resulting birthday dates show as "None."

My hunch is that in converting from EXCEL to CSV, I am losing the date
format somehow. I suspect I need to use the "Values" function somehow, which
I tried, but it did not work.

How can I retain the dates in the EXCEL column in the conversion to CSV, and
then in the subsequent import into Outlook Contacts?