excel date formats changed

[bob]

I have been working on a large spreadsheet. my date formats have been fine
until today, when I opened the spreadsheet to update it and all the dates are
appearing as numbers. I have tried reformatting the cell, coping the format
from a cell that is working on another spreadsheet, deleting, inserting and
copying formats but nothing is working. What has happened? I am using excel
2000 on windows xp. Any suggestions gratefully received.

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

What could have happened is that your dates got their serial numbers (days
after Jan 0 1900) then
formatted as text, try this. Reformat them as general, then copy an empty
cell, select the dates and
do edit>paste special and select add, now try to format as dates