And you're trying to enter dates, right?

If you format that 8/5/2009 (converted to 08-05-2009) in an unambiguous date
format, like: mmmm dd, yyyy, I'm betting that you'll see:

May 8, 2009

If that's true, then excel won't touch the first two entries since their is no
month that corresponds to 15 or 16.

Excel uses the windows short date format (modified in Windows Control
panel|regional settings) to parse your entry.

And I'm guessing that your short date format is in dmy order.

So you can either change that windows setting or you can change the order you
enter your dates.



On 05/17/2010 08:59, Ghitorni wrote:
Opened a new file, typed 8/15/2009 in A1, 8/16/2009 in A2, 8/5/2009 in
A3. Automatically, the last one gets converted to 08-05-2009, and
right-aligned also. Happens in all new files I create. Am I doing
something wrong because I wanted the same treatment for both earlier
values which appear left-aligned. Any clues? I am using excel 2007. Thanks