Fixing Bad Dates in Microsoft Excel

Excel

Somebody sent you some lame date layout, such as a column of dates not formatted as dates, and no matter what you do, you can't get them to be formatted properly.

Here's a formula that will help you get it right. If you use the DATE formula, Excel wants the first part to be the year:

LEFT(A1,4)

The second part is the month:

MID(A1,5,2)

The third part is the day (date):

RIGHT(A1,2)

Another method is to use the Text to Columns Feature. Select the entire column of "bad" dates, and hit Data Text to Columns. Choose Delimited, hit Next, hit Next again to get to Step 3 of 3. Then choose the YMD date format from the Date dropdown, and hit Finish.