Locked Colums In Excel?

[Nick]

Hello, I have a propietary program some of my programmers
wrote that dumps data from our software to excel, and for
one reason or another i am unable to change the date
format in a few colums, however i am able in others. The
document isnt read only, its not locked, its not
protected, any ideas? i spoke to the programmers and
they were unable to tell me why this happens, if i can
attach a file i could show you guys what i am talking
about, please feel free to ask me any other questions
sorry for the vague description but this is all i know
about the document, thank you all in advance for the
help and advice.
-Nick

 

[Steve]

I bet your programmers have exported the column as text,
rather than a numeric date. Try inserting a column next
to the date one you want to change, and in it, multiply
the date column by 1. You should end up with an integer
that you can format as a date!