I have spreadsheet into which I regularly copy and paste a data table
from a website. The website table shows dates as, for example, Dec 31
and when these are pasted into my spreadsheet they then appear as Dec-31
and if I click on the cell it actually contains 01/12/1931! I presume
this is because of the way Excel (2003) tries to (helpfully!) recognise
what it thinks is a date.

Is there a way to stop this happening please?

Alternatively, is there a way to extract the real date, in this case 31
Dec 2014, from theses cells. I have tried using RIGHT and MID functions
but don't seem to get to the right result.

Thanks.