I am running office professional 97 on windows XP platform and have a problem
with excel date formats. The control panel regional settings in windows are
set correctly to English ( united Kingdom ) with short date format of
DD/MM/YYYY.
when I apply format cells in excel and select the date category the date
formats presented appear to be in US format i.e. MM/DD/YYYY. and if applied
to cells, the US date format is displayed.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling excel, but problem still persists.

In Access, the date formats are in the correct UK format and not US.

Are there any obvious reasons that Excel is ignoring the Windows regional
settings ?
are there any settings within Excel that can bring this in line ?

I know the obvious answer is going to be upgrade to Office XP professional,
but I can't afford the funds at the moment and Office 97 professional does
everything I want to at the moment.