title: Dates not recognized as Dates, despite format
body: <p>I have imported a column with many dates, but Excel will NOT read them as dates for some reason.  I have looked around and tried doing <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4660906/some-dates-recognized-as-dates-some-dates-not-recognized-why">"Text to Columns"</a> and using "DMY" format.  I have also tried simply changing the format of the cells to Date (also Custom 'dd/mm/yyyy'), but nothing works.  </p>
  
  <p>Here's what the dates look like (Column A):</p>
  
  <pre><code>09/17/2013
  09/05/2013
  11/11/2013
  11/11/2013
  12/29/2013
  11/15/2013
  12/04/2013
  12/04/2013
  12/04/2013
  12/12/2013
  12/04/2013
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I am trying to determine the month(), day(), and year() but nothing works.  If I do =Month(a1) it returns January for all of the dates, regardless.  However, =Year(a1) returns the correct year...why is month not working?</p>
  
  <p>I have even tried a helper column to split up the dates into simple text, using a formula like =left(A1,search("/",A1)) but that returns a #VALUE error!  </p>
  
  <p>What is preventing Excel from seeing these as dates, so I can treat them as such?  Thanks for any help or advice!!</p>
  
  <p>Edit:  When changing the date to the "Number" format, Excel 'correctly' changes the date format to the numerical 411928 type, so I know at SOME level it knows it's a date.  I have then done Text to Columns, using "/" as delimiter, and split the data into three columns.  In a fourth column, I combined the splits via =Date(A3,A1,A2) [for 'date(year,month,day)'] but then when I paste that back into the spreadsheet, still can't use =month()...</p>