I have a little spread shee with a column called "date" that contains dates
in a "*3/14/2001" format. That's what I see when I highlight all its cells
and click "format cells." I'm accustomed to sorting by clicking on the
column header and then the "sort xxx to xxx" icon. Five minutes ago I did
this and was offered "sort oldest to newest" and "sort newest to oldest"
menu items. I don't know exactly what I did after that, but now when I try
to do the same thing I'm only offered "sort A to Z" and "Sort Z to A." This
doesn't work out right, of course. What's going on?

TIA
LAS