Hi Patsy,
I expected that you had numbers for one reason or another
and then formatted the column as a date. The date formatting
does not take effect until reentered.

Since you say you originally had dates. You might have run a
macro, or you might have multiplied cells in the column by 1
or added an empty cell using paste special as a technique to
convert text strings to numbers. That would also remove the formatting
so you would have to add the formatting again, Then you are
at the point described in the first paragraph.
---
HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Patsy Caddy" wrote in message ...
We have a huge spreadsheet containing various pieces of information about
files. One of the columns contains a date. The column is formatted as
Date. However, for some inexplicable reason the date in this column is now
showing as just digits. If you double click on the cell it displays the
date as it should be seen, i.e.

40634 = 01/04/2011
37834 = 01/08/2003
37926 = 01/11/2003

Can anyone explain why, please. Also, it doesn't matter how I format that
particular column it refuses to display the date as a date.